Vampire spiders among animal behaviour topics
massey-university
Tue Apr 14 2009 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Vampire spiders among animal behaviour topics
Tuesday, 14 April 2009, 2:32 pm
Press Release: Massey University
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Angry ants and vampire spiders among animal behaviour topics
Why does the feather-legged assassin bug have an appetite for bad-tempered ants? What compels dogs to sometimes eat grass? And do some native New Zealand birds sing more sweetly than others of their species because of their geographic location?
Such scientific quests are among the more than 50 research papers being presented at an animal behaviour conference at the Albany campus this week, from tomorrow until Saturday.
The role of vision across diverse species, and the understanding of pain and how to treat and manage it in domestic animals are among the themes covered by scientists, mostly from New Zealand and Australia, attending the meeting of the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Dr Gadi Katzir, a specialist in amphibious vision in birds, will open the first day of the conference for a plenary session by scientists studying vision in a wide range of species, from octopus to merino sheep.
Conference convener Associate Professor Dianne Brunton says many of the topics – such as the study of vision and neural function in animals – have implications for human biology, as well as relevance for evolutionary changes and conservation.
Dr Brunton says technological advances in the use of digital sound and video recordings and computer capacity have enabled significant advances in animal behaviour research. She is presenting research on a range of native New Zealand birds’ mating behaviour and song, including how female bellbirds discriminate between friendly and hostile song from neighbouring female bellbirds.
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Postgraduate students from Albany will also present research on how the grey warbler can distinguish the “begging for food” call of its offspring, variations in the mating song of the North Island saddleback across geographic locations, leeches and antifreeze, rodent scent, hihi (stitchbird) behaviour and many other behaviourally based projects.
Research papers cover a wide range of mainly Australian and New Zealand but some African and Asian species – including gannets, moths, bottlenose dolphins, Fiddler crabs, merino sheep, vampire spiders, snub-nosed monkeys, the gloomy octopus and the luridly named feather-legged assassin bug which eats all manner of ants but prefers aggressive or “bad-tempered” types.
In the area of animal pain and its effects on behaviour, a Massey study investigated whether lambs castrated at an early age experienced more pain than non-castrated lambs when they later had their tails docked.
Researchers from the Institute of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences’ say their study suggests early castration of lambs “affects the type of behavioural response used to deal with docking-related pain”, based on the premise that “painful events in early life can effect persistent changes in nervous function".
Also in the realm of animal pain and how it is manifested in behaviour, researchers from Australia's University of New England in Armidale examined whether dogs eat grass to relieve gastric troubles, constipation or nausea.
ENDS
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