Exam 13: Antipredator Behavior

Dial and Fitzpatrick (1983) staged encounters between a feral cat and two species of lizard, for each of which autotomy was induced by the experimenters. In some instances, the cat attacked the autotomized tail rather than the lizard allowing the lizard to escape; in others, the cat ignored the tail and attacked and captured the lizard. The primary difference between the two situations appears to have been

Sometimes background matching is not sufficient to prevent prey from being seen by predators because they can be recognized by their body outline. Some animals attempt to break up their body outline by

An individual with a false head

Kiltie (1989) examined approximately 2000 museum specimens of fox squirrels, described as the most variable in color of all mammals in North America, and determined the percentage of dorsal black for each of the skins. He found that the incidence of melanistic individuals is correlated with the ______ over the total range of the squirrel.

The cephalopod mollusks known as cuttlefish

A predatory bird that eats a monarch butterfly is likely to

The assassin bug, the bombardier beetle, the skunk, and the Texas horned lizard are similar in that they all make use of _____ when confronted with a predator.

Cuthill and colleagues (2005) conducted a field study designed to test hypotheses about the concealment effectiveness of different types of disruptive coloration. They expected all three of their different types of treatment stimuli to be equally camouflaged from the standpoint of background matching because

Many prey animals that have dangerous or unpleasant attributes

Burghardt and Greene (1988) monitored the recovery times following feigning death in newborn hognose snakes and found that the snakes took longer to recover than a control condition under which of the following conditions?

Animals that employ background matching are camouflaged in some habitats but not in others. Such animals are

A palatable species that has adopted the warning characteristics of a noxious or harmful species is exhibiting

The ability to break off a body part when attacked is called

Harrassing displays by prey animals that involve repeated approaches to the predator, accompanied by visual (and possibly auditory) components, are more likely to be directed at a

Animals with warning coloration often enhance their visual conspicuousness behaviorally by

Stotting, a behavioral display with many hypothesized functions, is most likely to be performed by

The antipredator mechanism referred to as the "selfish herd" (Hamilton, 1971) emphasizes that

A species in which individuals occur in a variety of shapes and/or colors is exhibiting

Most forms of animal camouflage, e.g., matching background colors, masquerade, etc., were described more than a century ago.

Cuthill and colleagues (2005) conducted a field study designed to test hypotheses about the concealment effectiveness of different types of disruptive coloration. They found that the artificial prey types with the highest probability of survival after 1400 minutes were the ones in the