Subject: Ducks behavior, rape, and weird sparrow.
Date: Jan 23 11:54:54 1996
From: Alvaro Jaramillo - alvaro at quake.net


>According to a friend of mine who is taking Animal Behavior at University of
>Madison, the Animal Behavior field is full of papers on courtship behavior
>of mallards -- largely because it's pretty easy to see (lots of mallards,
>and they don't exactly hide in bushes, they feel safe in the middle of large
>ponds, which are within visual range.)
>
>I seem to recall him saying that not only do Mallards have courtship
>behavior but they have some downright unsavory (from the human perspective)
>courtship behaviors (e.g. apparent 'rape') as well.
>

Leslie,

Believe it or not this behaviour has caused a great deal of argument,
discussion, politics, and anger in the behavioral ecology field. The
behaviour is common in birds, many insects, fish, some mammals etc. Some
males force themselves on females, without performing any courtship
behaviour, and try to mate. The females either fight back or try and get
away from these unsolicited advances. The behaviour is often performed by
males that are not territory holders, young males, or more generally males
that have a small probability of breeding that season; officially biologists
term this behaviour forced copulation. The problem came in when in some of
the early papers biologists used the term rape to describe this behaviour,
this brought a lot of biologists into the limelight as the media caught wind
that animals also commit rape. The issue became highly political and
sensitive. Women's groups were concerned that this research would somehow
show that rape in humans was 'natural' and therefore not a serious crime.
However, murder is also 'natural' in my opinion, but this does not make it
an acceptable activity! Some biologists were concerned that forced
copulations in animals and rape in humans were not the same things. Male
Mallards force copulate to increase their chance of fathering more Mallards,
is this why men do it? I personally don't think so, but I am not a
sociologist or psychologist and I know little about those fields. In any
case, this whole debate is an interesting one if you are interested in the
subjects of science and the media, science and politics, science and freedom
of speech etc. I don't have many of the references but Randy Thornhill's
work on scorpionflies was some of the first to be criticized.

Thornhill, R. 1980. Rape in Panorpa scorpionflies and a general rape
hypothesis. Anim. Behav. 28: 52-59.

Thornhill, R. and N.W. Thornhill. 1983. Human rape: an evolutionary
analysis. Ethology and Sociobiology. 4:137-173.

I think that those papers really stirred things up. Recently biologists
have adopted the term forced copulation for several reasons, one of them
largely to avoid attracting negative attention to themselves. Others worry
about the use of a term that has so much emotional baggage attached to it,
no biologists wants to belittle the suffering of rape victims by using the
term loosely, and its also unclear that the behaviour in humans and in other
creatures is indeed the same thing.

Should make some interesting reading. Sorry Serge, I know you were just
asking a simple question about duck behaviour. Well, maybe now that you know
the real story you will boycott the local duck pond and turn your attention
to some decent birds like gulls, or dare I say it blackbirds! ;-)

BTW, while I was writing this (just ten minutes ago), the weirdest sparrow
popped up at my feeder. It was strikingly different from the Golden-crowns
and White-crowns just with my naked eye. I got it in my binos and only one
word can describe this thing- WEIRD. It looks intermediate between a
Golden-crowned Sparrow and a White-throated Sparrow. It is like a
Golden-crown in size and shape (much larger than a White-throat) but has a
clear white throat and a pale grey breast that contrasts with the darker
belly. The supercilium is whitish with a bright yellow area in the
supralores (anterior part of the supercilum). The lateral crown stripes are
brown, without any black and there is a pale median crown stripe. Unlike a
Golden-crown, this bird has an obvious eye-stripe behind the eye. The bill
is a little smaller than those of the nearby Golden-crowns. The upperparts
look like a regular Golden-crown's. I was able to snap two quick photos, but
I am waiting for it to come back so that I can get more. Does anyone know if
this hybrid is known? Now if this is indeed a hybrid between those two
species, where would it happen? I didn't think that the two species
overlapped in their breeding range.

I will report back if I see it againg. If I can confirm this, it will
certainly be the rarest bird I have seen in my backyard. However, I doubt
that any birders will come to see it - an unfortunate fact.



Alvaro Jaramillo "You are better off not knowing
Half Moon Bay, CA how sausages and laws are made"
alvaro at quake.net Otto von Bismarck,
but I saw it in a fortune cookie!

http://www.quake.net/~alvaro/index.html