Sunday 30 June 2013

How animals use humans and the human environment?

Now I am sure there is a more technical and up to date term that describes the activity where an animal, or animals, use(s) human(s) and the environment created by humans - but for the moment I am going to use the term (that hopefully I have made up and doesn't exist already - this may be amended in later edits) Anthropic Faunal Behaviour (AFB). 

Anthropic - "Of or pertaining to mankind or humans, or the period of humanity's existence." (Wikipedia 2013a)

Faunal - "Pertaining to animals." (Wikitionary 2013)

I got to thinking about this AFB after watching the BBC 2 Horizon programme on cats and how they are monitored through camera and global positioning system (GPS) tracking) - this programme can also be viewed on YouTube

I was interested in two distinct types of AFB, which I have named Active and Passive AFB - henceforth known as aAFB or pAFB - where the animal, a cat in these first few examples, either actively uses humans and their environment or not. When a cat is fed by its owner, I am suggesting that this is an example of aAFB as the cat's brain is accepting the food offered by the human and bypassing the natural instinct of hunting and killing prey. The definition of aAFB, as I see it, is where the animals gains something useful directly from the human. 

However, if the cat were to jump on and use the fence to reach a roof, I would like to suggest that this is a form of pAFB as I think that cat sees the fence and roof as an extension of the natural habitat. Although it could posited that the cat's senses would pick up the difference between natural and man-made structures through hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. The definition of pAFB, as I see it,  is where the animal uses human activity and/or human infrastructure/environment to gain something later in that animal's time line.

Although there could be an argument for a grey area between aAFB and pAFB, I currently searching for an example of this.

An example of pAFB with larger cats can be seen with the video of the cheetah as shot by novatolady and is shown below. The cheetah jumps up onto the Land Rover at around 22 seconds. Is the cheetah using it to escape the cheetah cub or is it using the elevated surface to look for prey and predators? Either way, I think the cheetah made a conscious effort to use the Land Rover for further activity but gains nothing directly from the humans.


I can say that this is not an individual event as a search on YouTube offered 397,000 videos although I cannot vouch for the authenticity of each of these videos as I haven't watched them all.

Next time - Avian aAFB & pAFB

Anthropic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013a. Anthropic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic. [Accessed 30 June 2013].

faunal - Wiktionary. 2013. faunal - Wiktionary. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/faunal. [Accessed 30 June 2013].

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