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Tonic immobility (also known as the act of feigning death, or exhibiting thanatosis) is a behaviour in which some animals become apparently temporarily paralysed and unresponsive to external stimuli. Tonic immobility is most generally considered to be an anti-predator behavior because it occurs most often in response to an extreme threat such ...
Distraction displays frequently take the form of injury-feigning. [4] However, animals may also imitate the behavior of a small rodent or alternative prey item for the predator; [13] [14] [15] imitate young [12] or nesting behaviors such as brooding (to cause confusion as to the true location of the nest), [13] mimic foraging behaviors away ...
Certain words in the English language represent animal sounds: the noises and vocalizations of particular animals, especially noises used by animals for communication. The words can be used as verbs or interjections in addition to nouns , and many of them are also specifically onomatopoeic .
At the second level, an animal performs a programmed act of behaviour, as when a prey animal feigns death to avoid being eaten. At the third level, the deceptive behaviour is at least partially learnt, as when a bird puts on a distraction display , feigning injury to lure a predator away from a nest.
Many prey animals, and to defend against seed predation also seeds of plants, [55] make use of poisonous chemicals for self-defence. [51] [56] These may be concentrated in surface structures such as spines or glands, giving an attacker a taste of the chemicals before it actually bites or swallows the prey animal: many toxins are bitter-tasting ...
A nocturnal animal, the striped hyena typically only emerges in complete darkness, and is quick to return to its lair before sunrise. [10] Although it has a habit of feigning death when attacked, it has been known to stand its ground against larger predators in disputes over food. [11]
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans , an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners . [ 1 ]
A talking animal or speaking animal is any non-human animal that can produce sounds or gestures resembling those of a human language. [1] Several species or groups of animals have developed forms of communication which superficially resemble verbal language, however, these usually are not considered a language because they lack one or more of the defining characteristics, e.g. grammar, syntax ...