• Question: What is t'he most fascinating thing you found about animals

    Asked by Joansauleda to Ines, Ellen, Carrie on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      I found out that horses, cats and dogs respond to stress differently depending on their personality – just like in humans. Once we know this we can get better at working out which individuals are more sensitive to stress and how they’ll tell us if they are stressed. I think that’s fascinating.

    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      I don’t know if it is as such fascinating but I thought it was pretty cool… I found that elephants have distinct personality types (which can be assessed by keepers), I also found that their sleep behaviour is affected by time of night, whether or not they have other elephants with them and whether they have the opportunity to lie on soft flooring (such as sand) or concrete

    • Photo: Ines Goncalves

      Ines Goncalves answered on 11 Mar 2017:

      hmm.. I’ve found several things about the particularly species I’ve worked with, but I confess, none of them have been world shattering.
      My favourite was something I found during my phd. I worked with pipefish, a small fish species from the same family as seahorses where females transfer the eggs to the males and the males become effectively pregnant, giving the embryos nutrients and oxygen until they “give birth” and small babies (miniatures of the adults) are released from the pouch. The csh look like this: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=broad+nosed+pipefish&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3mbvS-s7SAhUGBMAKHX6cBMQQ_AUIBigB&biw=1254&bih=630

      So what I found was that small males aren’t very good at giving the embryos oxygen, at least compared to larger males. At the same time, females prefer to mate with large males compared to small males but because males become pregnant for 1-2 months at a time (depends on water temperature), females don’t have a lot of options and to say no to a small male may meant that they don’t get to reproduce at all. So females do mate with small males, but they give the eggs extra nutrition, like a little extra care to make up for the small males poor care. Smart hey! 😉

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