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hubie writes:

The Selfish Herd Hypothesis posits that zebras zigzagging for the middle of a herd should be safest from the lion, but a recent study suggests otherwise:

It seems logical: animals should dash to the center of their herd to avoid an attacking predator. But a recent modeling study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that this strategy, the foundation of the Selfish Herd Hypothesis, could actually backfire. That's because individuals struggling to get to the middle have to dodge and weave through the crowd to keep evading the predator. Often they eventually end up at the back of the pack, where they're easy pickings.

First proposed by British naturalist William Hamilton in 1971, the notion that animals are better protected by heading for the middle of the group has been textbook for decades, says article author Daniel Sankey. And yet, Sankey's models actually show that the individuals heading for the middle are often less protected compared with those who have other escape strategies.

Sankey, a behavioral ecologist and postdoc at the University of Exeter Penryn Campus in Cornwall, UK, began thinking about selfish herds while studying flocks of pigeons in 2021. [...]

Sankey was intrigued. Could other behaviors be, at times, more advantageous than moving to the middle? In this latest study, he modeled both selfish behavior and an alternative behavior. [...]

When challenged by a predator, the birds aligning with their neighbors had much better luck escaping the predator. The selfish middle-seeking birds, meanwhile, "end up at the back," Sankey explains.

[...] Based on these latest modeling findings, Sankey would expect the selfish herding behavior to be rare in nature. Most wild animals in fact don't demonstrate it. "You don't see gazelles running from a lion all huddling in a group," he says. [...]

Behavioral ecologist Ambika Kamath at the University of Colorado Boulder says that the field of behavioral ecology is "sorely in need of research that interrogates the foundational assumptions of longstanding theories," and she calls this work a "straightforward and elegant" example of how to do so.

Journal Reference:
Sankey Daniel W. E. 2022 'Selfish herders' finish last in mobile animal groups Proc. R. Soc. B. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1653

Original Submission

1. "hubie" - https://soylentnews.org/~hubie/
2. "The Selfish Herd Hypothesis posits that zebras zigzagging for the middle of a herd should be safest from the lion, but a recent study suggests otherwise" - https://www.pnas.org/post/journal-club/fleeing-middle-pack-doesn-t-necessarily-protect-against-predators
3. "recent modeling study" - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.1653
4. "studying flocks of pigeons" - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221006680?via=ihub
5. "10.1098/rspb.2022.1653" - http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1653
6. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=57518

printed from SoylentNews, Fleeing to the Middle of the Pack Doesn't Necessarily Protect Against Predators on 2024-04-24 06:56:37