A viral coyote-badger video demonstrates the incredible complexity of nature
A behavioral ecologist breaks down the importance of an adorable wildlife clip.
Somewhere in the Southern Santa Cruz Mountains of California, a coyote playfully bows to an American badger just before both duck into a culvert under a highway, the coyote casually trotting along with the badger waddling close behind. When the Peninsula Open Space Trust and Pathways For Wildlife shared a remote video of the crossing online in early February, it went viral. The video is part of a project to help wild animals move around safely in high-traffic, dangerous areas, something critical to maintaining populations’ genetic health. I greatly admire this work. However, what makes this particular crossing exceptional, to me, as a behavioral ecologist, are the deeper implications of the video itself.
The first thing that excites me is that it allows the charisma of this partnership to reach a broad audience. Scientists have observed coyotes and badgers working together before; one study even demonstrated that both species have an easier time catching prey when they hunt together. But the more the general public sees the playful, social side of two extremely persecuted carnivores, the better. I will never stop sharing videos of coyotes playing with dog toys or domestic animal companions, or scaling crab-apple trees for a snack.
The second thing that excites me is what the video means for animal research, management and behavioral ecology. There isn’t a consistent “natural rule” that coyotes and badgers get along; in fact, the two species sometimes kill and eat one another. This demonstrates the flexibility in natural processes. Humans (many scientists included) are often guilty of thinking animal behavior must follow hard and fast “rules”: Stimulus A elicits Behavior B, always. I see this a lot when people ask me about canine behavior or crow calls; a wagging tail doesn’t always indicate a happy dog, for instance, and certain crow calls mean very different things in different circumstances, much the way the intention behind a human’s use of the word “hey” varies with tone, inflection and context.
Experiments and “rules” that eliminate context often end up framing animal behavior and ecological associations as coded, robotic and inflexible. People tend to think of animal actions as simply instinct, denying the role of thinking, plasticity and decision-making in other creature’s lives.
Read more here: https://www.hcn.org/articles/wildlife-a-viral-coyote-badger-video-demonstrates-the-incredible-complexity-of-nature
