Mike
Carruthers:
Animals
can sometimes be just plain rude, for example lobsters often act
like mobsters.
Augustus Brown:
To become the dominant alpha male in a lobster community
is kind of every male lobster's obsession and they fight constantly
to achieve this.
Animal behavior
expert Augustus Brown, author of the book Why
Pandas do Handstands…
Once a lobster
kind of achieved this sort of kingpin status, he spends each
night reminding all the other lobsters in his community who's
the boss and he does this by throwing them out of their homes
and beating them up. Curiously females are very strongly attracted
to this and congregate around the male's home after he's finished
his violent night's work.
Being a wasp
or honeybee is no picnic… why?
The queen bee's
authority is absolute - she is the only one who is allowed to
lay female eggs and the punishment for breaking this law is
severe. If a worker honeybee comes across a stray egg, it'll
conduct a thorough investigation and if this bee decides that
it hasn't been laid by the queen it will eat the egg up. And
wasps are even tougher on these transgressions - if they discover
female members of their nest laying their own eggs, they immediately
form a gang of vigilantes, grab the criminal and deliver a series
of painful stings that usually kills them.
Not all animal
behavior is so harsh - prairie dogs it's been discovered love
to gossip and elephants are great mimics.
They can impersonate
all sorts of sounds and a bunch of elephants in India were discovered
impersonating perfectly the sound of passing trucks.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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