Research from BYU wildlife sciences professors finds that when hunting season starts, elk in Utah move off of public lands — where they can be hunted — and onto private lands — where they cannot be hunted. And then, when hunting season is over, they shift right back to public lands.
Deer do this with the local national park. It is cut up into bits by privately owned farms and the deer go out at night to eat the crops and then hide on federal land during the day.
I mean, we very directly teach them that if they go certain places they're liable to be killed and they go others they'll stay safe. It's just evolution in motion. Guess it's cool that people see these animals aren't just meat with a nervous system but clearly have some kind of conscious awareness of what's safe and what isn't.
Fawns would follow their mother and learn opportune eating and hiding strategies, those that didn't learn would likely just end up on the hood of someone's range rover.
This sounds more like culture than evolution. They have to learn where the danger is, then transmit that information across generations and to other deer. It seems unlikely that ever individual deer is figuring this out on their own.
Deer do this with the local national park. It is cut up into bits by privately owned farms and the deer go out at night to eat the crops and then hide on federal land during the day.
I mean, we very directly teach them that if they go certain places they're liable to be killed and they go others they'll stay safe. It's just evolution in motion. Guess it's cool that people see these animals aren't just meat with a nervous system but clearly have some kind of conscious awareness of what's safe and what isn't.
that's not evolution it's learned behaviour
I wonder if the there elks are passing this information to their offsprings?
Probably not with language obviously, but just showing them where to go and when is enough for any animal to learn by observation.
Fawns would follow their mother and learn opportune eating and hiding strategies, those that didn't learn would likely just end up on the hood of someone's range rover.
It appears that these with different behaviour - say even for just a day or two late - simply didn't survive to "skew" the statistics.
This sounds more like culture than evolution. They have to learn where the danger is, then transmit that information across generations and to other deer. It seems unlikely that ever individual deer is figuring this out on their own.