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Of course such similar animal cohabiting in the same area will have "social relationships". Some birds have social relationship with mammals, as evidenced in ma
by ogig 4y ago
Of course such similar animal cohabiting in the same area will have "social relationships". Some birds have social relationship with mammals, as evidenced in many human to bird relationships. After many years observing corvids seems to me that carrion crows and magpies do have something that could be called social relationship.
Don't want to be dismissive of the merits of this study, but to my eyes this is another "water is wet" paper. We keep insisting in this anthropocentric approach to understanding the world and it leads to plenty of biases.
You are an animal, you have social relationships with other species (your dog, ie). Asume others animals, like you, do the same.
PS: Wrote after some late night wine, excuses.
- Sharlin 4y agoAs always, science is just as much about confirming null hypotheses as it is about disproving them. Either way can be equally good science. Having scientific evidence that X happens is much more valuable than having a hypothesis that X happens. And obviously evidence almost never conveys just a single bit of information. This paper is about how and when and where and to what degree X was observed to happen, not only whether X did happen.
- ComplexSystems 4y agoSadly, real-world Science is almost never about confirming null hypotheses. There is an enormous amount of research that never gets published for this reason; because the authors had some interesting idea and it just happened to not pan out.
- zasdffaa 4y agoNo it's not obvious at all. Chimp tribes kill each other, ditto human tribes, and many other species. Added: to me it's about the last thing I'd have expected.
- chrisco255 4y agoI dunno, among humans, it seems like the most intense historical rivalries are usually among tribes that are rather similar.
- im3w1l 4y agoI agree it's obvious that they will start to relate to each other if they cohabitate, and in that sense it's "water is wet". But the details of how exactly they relate might still be cool.