Svar fra Runar Næss
Hei Tonje,
og velkommen til virkelighetens «brutale» verden 😉
Det skjer ikke så ofte, sant nok, men det er ganske riktig endel hunder som ser på mindre hunder som byttedyr. Det er til og med noen (meget få) hunder som ser på små mennesker som byttedyr – så da blir det kanskje mer forståelig at en «flaksende liten sak med slappe kaninører» lett kan få rollen som «hare» i en «lek» som er vanskelig å stoppe!
Jeg tenker selvfølgelig i mitt første eksempel på Dokka-tragedien, der en 7 år gammel gutt ble angrepet og drept av hunder, nettopp i et jaktangrep!
Dette var ikke aggresive hunder. Det var ingen aggresjon i atferden – ikke før en (1) av hundene viste bytteforsvar mot de som kom til stedet og forsøkte redde gutten – det også en naturlig del av jaktatferd. Da var det som kjent uansett for sent 🙁
>Trodde de at cockeren var mat – at de ikke skjønte at det var en unghund? >Burde ikke lukt, kroppspråk fortalt dem noe annet?
Det er sterke krefter som settes i sving når jaktinstinktet «trigges». Jeg kan ikke si hvorfor akurat denne hunden utløste jakten, men det gjorde den. Det har ikke med mat å gjøre, kun jakt. Jakten (isolert sett) er helt uavhengig av sult, selv om det endelige formålet er å skaffe mat. Det er like lett å få en mett hund til å løpe etter en ball som det er med en sulten hund, sant?
Hvorvidt de «burde» eller ikke «burde» er desverre ikke opp til oss å vurdere, og hva som foregår inne i hodet på en hund er det ingen av oss som kan si med sikkerhet – ikke en gang jeg 😉 Om de vet det er en annen hund de jakter på? Det tror jeg kanskje, men ikke sikkert. Om de i så fall «gir faen» i det, og dreper den likevel? Ser sånn ut, men jeg kan ikke si sikkert.
Det jeg KAN si med sikkerhet derimot, er AT de gjør det! Da spiller det egentlig liten rolle hva vi synes om det – vi må forholde oss til at slik er det.
>så girer den opp de andre til å tro det samme – at det blir en slags «massesuggesjon»?
Ja – hunder er flokkdyr, og det betyr i praksis at man sover, spiser, leker og jakter SAMMEN. Så hvis en starter en atferd (også rolige atferder som hvile) vil gjerne de andre gjøre det samme. Uansett om de i utgangspunktet ikke hadde motivasjon til dette, eller ikke engang vet hva pokker som egentlig foregår. Mennesker er skremmende like her, når vi ser oss litt omkring 😉
>2 tilfeller hvor en flokk lekende hunder plutselig gyver løs på en, og skikkelig >skader den. Begge tilfeller var en gruppe hunder som kun kjente hverandre
> Er det noe av det samme fenomenet som det med valpen overfor?
Nei – det høres ut som to svært forskjellige situasjoner. Hunder som leker, slåss – og der leken går over i alvårlig slåssing med skader kalles gjerne skred-aggresjon eller «snowballing». Det er en sossial aggresjon der ting kommer ut av kontroll og «baller på seg» – uten nødvendigvis noe mål og mening eller engang med intensjon om å skade i utgangspunktet. Igjen ser vi flokkatferd, som gjør at alle henger seg på og tar den som ligger nede. Om ikke direkte sympatisk, så en helt naturlig egenskap som øker sjangsen for overlevelse hos ville dyr.
Husk; Hunder VET IKKE at de ikke er ville dyr! Hvordan skal de kunne vite det? Nevnte flokkatferd er forøvrig svært utbredt hos mennesker – og vi er da ikke ville dyr, er vi? Poenget er, at instinkter forsvinner ikke bare fordi vi (tror vi er) er «siviliserte» (HaHa) eller har blitt domestisert.
Situasjonen med cockeren, slik jeg forstår deg, inneholder ingen direkte aggresjon og er en ren jaktatferd. Intet mer, inten mindre.
>Har også hørt at slikt kan knyttes til «panikk-hyl»,
Helt riktig.
Skarpe hyl i angst er en av de sterkeste nøkkelstimuli (triggere) for jaktatferd. Annet er rask bevegelse BORT fra jegeren (flukt), ukontrolert fekting og «flaksing» med ekstremiteter (armer, ben, vinger). Hver av disse kan utløse en jaktrespons, og sammen kan det bli fatalt!
Hvis du skal kalle på et rovdyr, så er en av de beste metodene å imitere lyden av f.eks. en døende kanin. Jeg har en egen liten «fløyte» laget til jakt på Coyote som jeg bruker til nettopp dette.
>river en jo unektelig ut av Disney-verden!
HeHe – ja, dette er ikke det vi liker å tenke på mest som hundeeiere, men det MÅ vi! Hunder er ikke Disney-dyr, der alt bestandig går bra til slutt. De er rovdyr, riktig nok i noe «avslepen» form, men like fullt rovdyr. Dette må vi forstå – og akseptere. Mange mennesker kommer aldri til å forstå dette fullt ut, og sansynligvis vil det heller aldri spille noen rolle – noen få mennesker kommer til å lære det på en fatalt tragisk måte.
Hele Norge lærte noe om det i februar 2002.
Særlig (og helt forstålig) de som IKKE selv har hund.
MVH,
Runar Næss
PS. Jeg tillater meg å sende med noe «klipp» jeg skrev i et seminar om dette tema på en liste i USA.
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That’s one of the tricky parts of recognizing and understanding predatory behavior – and a main cause of many accidents (many involving children).
There is NO aggression in predatory behavior!
There are no warnings, no sound!
That would be stupid wouldn’t it – warning your prey?
The animal can be happy as pie (and usually is – at least «excited-happy») while launching a deadly attack.
It will go on afterwards like nothing happened.
For the animal, not much did happen.
It was walking a long, saw a prey item, killed it – and went on with it’s daily routine.
So what? That’s what they do, right?
Now, predators are all programmed to do that, the only difference is what each animal considers a prey item.
This is of cause individual to each animal depending on previous learning, but an attack can be launched at any object that resembles pray – even if it’s not on the menu.
Stalking, attack, killing, all have their own triggers and energy sources – called Action Specific Energy (ASE).
And of cause, hunger has nothing to do with it.
Eating is NOT a predatory behavior!
All animals eat – but all animals are not predators!
The ASE for stalking can be high in some animals, lower in others. Some animals (like some big cats) can live their whole (captive) life in stalking mode, as a stereotype behavior.
The triggers can also be individual.
The threshold for releasing a behavior are individual and the trigger(s) itself can be different. Some will respond strongly to movement, some to sound, some to size, – some to God-knows-what? and all of the above!
Social aggression is so much easier to identify and «understand» than predatory behavior for most people.
You would think that predatory behavior was motivated by hunger, but if it was the animal would starve to death.
To stick with the wolf – it’s successful in maybe 1 out of 20 hunts (I’m just using round, easy figures here).
A typical hunting sequence would be:
(simple version – there are stages in between)
1) pray search
2) tracking
3) stalking
4) attack
5) kill
6) eat
Now, all of these components has its own energy source
Action Specific Energy (ASE).
And the energy also has different characteristics for each component.
Searching for pray is a full time job. The energy for doing so is always present and almost never depleted. So it is a type of energy that has great «volume» but low «intensity». Low intensity, meaning the animal doesn’t get all exited every time it smells a moose in the woods – it may or may not decide to do anything about it.
Now, if it DOES decide to follow up on it, the tracking begins and the intensity increases. But if the tracking doesn’t lead to anything within a certain time, it will abort and go back to basic search mode.
Still a relatively low intensity.
The natural hunting statistic may look like this:
20 locating pray, but 5 are out of reach
15 tracking, but 4 are never spotted
11 stalking, 4 detect the wolf and run of
7 attacks (rush), 3 run too fast & 3 stand their ground
1 kill
1 eat
When the eating is over, the ASE for eating is depleted, right? Full stomach satisfies eating behavior and the energy for eating is «shut of». The behavior stops. (ZZZZZZZ;)
BUT – we still have 6 times the energy for attacking,
10 times the energy for stalking and so on,
that is NOT depleted!
THAT is the predatory behavior!
It is still fully present although eating no longer has anything to do with it.
The animal still has the motivation to attack prey 6 more times! (in real life this means always!)
So, hunting/predatory behavior is not motivated by hunger
– only eating is motivated by hunger.
To further increase the «problem», the volume and intensity of ASE in a hunting sequence, and therefore predatory behavior, is moving from to as we move closer to the kill.
The animal may have 20 -30 opportunities each day to hunt, but voluntarily abort/disregard most of them (high volume/low intensity), but faced with a possible kill, it’s feast or famine and there may be days before the next chance for a kill – and the intensity is extremely high.
A kill is almost impossible to abort, once it has started.
Now, this mechanism is what comes into effect when a wolf gets in to a flock of sheep or cattle.
The wolf rushes through the hunting sequence full speed, hardly depleting any of its energy, makes a kill, looks around and sees another pray item and then «shortcuts» straight to attack (without going through the earlier stages of the hunt) and kills again. This goes on until the ASE for killing is depleted. The wolf will then continue to attack, but now without killing, until the ASE for attack is depleted (luckily not a high volume ASE, or it would never stop). It may never eat any of its kills, if hunger is not present to motivate eating behavior.
Did this make sense to anyone?
Or am I just rambling 😉
>Is this all from your experience or do you have some >resources on predatory behavior?
Mostly, this model is something I have developed for my seminars, but you can find some of it (the hunting sequences) in Dave Mech, «The Wolf».
Only thing I have on ASE is from Dr. Klinghammer at Wolf Park, «Some basic principles of ethology and psychology», Ethology series #6, 1992.
> Is predatory behavior just practice for the real thing then?
No, not at all – it IS the real thing.
It is what separates predators from other animals, the ability to hunt down and kill other animals for food.
But it’s only one way of acquiring food – there are many others, even for predators.
>Or am I just getting the idea that wolves live to eat and not eat to live?
No, we all live to reproduce (if anything) and eat to live.
If you don’t eat, you don’t survive – so you don’t reproduce.
Humans are predators, right?
So what happens when there’s a crises, like hurricane, riot, powerloss or threat of war?
People stockpile food!
They empty the shelves at the supermarket!
WHY? Because of a sudden enormous hunger?
NO!
Because of our instinct to survive!
It has nothing to do with the feeling of hunger
– it is the instinct to survive and the knowledge (even subconscious) that we need food to do so that drives us. However irrational it may be at the time.
Same thing goes for wolves – but in a wolf’s life there is always a «threat of war» – a struggle for survival.
So they are always ready to «stockpile food» – they are programmed to do so by some million years of selective breeding.
Those who didn’t «stockpile», I.E. develop strong predatory responses, fare stronger than just what was needed to get your next meal, didn’t survive.
So, as I started out – predatory behavior has developed out of the need for long term survival and not JUST to acquire your next meal. That is just the effect of predatory behavior – it is not the primary motivation.
The motivation for predatory behavior is «hardwired» into the brain with ASE as a mechanism for survival.
That’s what makes a predator what it is.
You can feed a predator in captivity
(or at a garbage dump in the wild) so that it never has to hunt and kill, ever.
Is it then no longer a predator?
Does the constant presence of food remove predatory behavior?
Not even with selective breeding of dogs for 10s of thousands of years have we been able to remove predatory behavior in dogs!
They are STILL predators – although somewhat modified.
So no – eating and predatory behavior is fare from the same thing – and do not have the same motivations.
Although both aimed at the same goal, survival – one is on a day-to-day-basis, motivated by hunger.
The other is constant, motivated by the #1 basic instinct of survival.
Runar
PS: I realize your Q was probably not meant to be taken literally, Heidi – I was just on a role here ;o))))
As Phil said, Mech does not mention ASE and there is no video and no book that I am aware of that does.
The only thing I’ve ever read about it is in
Dr. Klinghammer’s pamphlet that says on page 3 :
Specific motivation:
«Various behavior pattern tend to have specific motivation. Thus a dog that has eaten 20 lbs. of meat may still go out in the field and hunt for mice, indicating that it’s motivation for hunting was not lowered by the presence of food in it’s stomach.»
That’s it ;(
The rest is from my own experience and numerous unspecified sources put together to explain ASE so people can understand it.
I use one model to make people understand why it’s a natural behavior for wolves to kill sheep even if they don’t eat any of them.
I use another (similar) model to explain to dog people why throwing a stick (or ball) all day to activate your dog is NOT a good idea.
> I would like to see a video on the intensity> behavior.
Now, the concept of «high volume/low intensity» vs. «low volume/ high intensity» goes for motivation or ASE, but that in turn of cause regulates the behavior.
If a behavior goes on all hours the animal is awake, I say it has a high volume of energy.
If a behavior takes place only every other day or from time to time, I say it has a low(er) volume.
Now, if a behavior is easy to stop – by the animal itself or by the environment, I’d say it has low intensity.
If it’s hard to stop – to the degree that a hoof in the ribs or a fire extinguisher emptied in your face does not stop the behavior, I say it has a high intensity.
It becomes very clear when you look at the hole hunting sequence, that you have a change in motivational characteristics from start to finish.
This is how I came up with the term and the further analyzes of ASE. Any suggestions as to how it can be named or explained better is welcomed.
If I was talking to an electrician I would call it «high voltage/low Amp’s» 😉
>I would be very interested in
>receiving your article when you finish it. Jon
Thanks Jon and y’all 😉
I will translate it and send it to the list in June some time.
>Have you taped any of your seminars?
Never even thought of that – but you have some good ideas there, Jon.
And knowing Kat, God knows what she can come up with :o))))
My next seminar is in Denmark, but it will be in Norwegian/Danish, so no good 😉
Did one in Iceland once that was in English, but you weren’t there to tape it, Jon !! 😉
Runar
Phil has some good point, but let me see if I can make it real simple.
1)What’s the relationship between predatory behaviour and whatever behaviour results in a mob attack on a wolf within a pack
NONE 😉
Mobbing is all social.
It has the social purpose in the wild to create «babysitters» for the pups.
2) predatory behaviour in dogs, is the modification
> you mention seen when dogs growl at other dogs.
No.
Modified predatory behavior in dogs is herding behavior. Herding in dogs is nothing but predatory behavior that has the last parts (the ones about the killing and eating) genetically removed through selective breeding for thousands of years.
Then you increase the ASE for stalking, also through selective breeding, and you have a Border Collie 😉
If you want a search dog, you may cut of even more «at the tail» of hunting behavior and increase ASE for searching and tracking.
If you want a LGD, you take away mostly all the hunting behavior and increase territorial behavior.
ASE can basically only be altered through selective breeding, but it can be stimulated or not in every animal at a young age.
>how about the dog who goes on alert but remains silent >or attacks silently. Is that a sign of a less modified >predatory response.
As Phil said, there is no sound in a predatory response, but wolves (and some dogs) also attack silently for social reasons. They may not always give a hole lot of warning or you may not see them and next thing you know is an attack – then usually from behind.
The way I understand your Q (being «alert»), it’s a social situation, not predatory.
Runar
>if someone gets mobbed in a pack there is stalking, attacking and sometimes >killing. I presume that everything they do has an ASE.
That’s right, you will see all these behavior patterns in a social context too, like play and social aggression, but the motivation is totally different. The motivation is then not predatory – just the behavior pattern.
All behaviors have an ASE – or some sort of motivation and triggers to release that motivation.
It may be hormones that trigger a behavior or it may be an environmental stimulus (sound, smell, etc.).
This is sort of why all behaviors does not occur at the same time 😉
They all have a time and a place to be put into action – and they all serve a specific purpose.
*Phil:*
>Why does mobbing create baby sitters ?
If we stick to the assumption that all behavior has a purpose, there are several functions mobbing might have.
1) To increase dispersal and therefore keep pack size from getting too big and risk starving to death.
2) Have some members of the pack, that are suppressed all year, so that when the pups are out of the den they seek to the pups and do not follow the other adults on hunts. Omegas automatically do that, since the pups pose no threat to them and are the only ones in the pack that can not, and will not, hurt them.
Omegas are also (usually) not attacked while playing with the pups. They serve an important role in the raising and protection of the pups when the rest of the pack is gone.
Now, if this should be decided every spring – who gone be the babysitter this year? – we would see a lot of aggression and possible damage (physical and social) in a time when the pack need all their resources to get enough food for the pups and themselves.
Therefore, the theory is that the «babysitter» is «elected» way in advance and is kept in his/her place all year.
«Your IT!» No more elections 😉
Runar
