Lots of herbivores do just that during mating season. They compete with and battle each other. Putting themselves at risk of injury or death.
It is not revenge per se, but a young buck that fails to attract a mate will make another challenge the next year.
But don’t you see the difference here? In your example, they are competing with other individuals for something (mates) that greatly improves their own reproductive success. There is risk, but also great reward. You can see how a gene that encourages aggression in this scenario could prosper by making it’s owner more likely to find a mate.
In the revenge scenario, they are putting themselves at risk, and for what? Their offspring is already dead. The OP suggests that doing so would encourage predators to stay away from predation of baby whatevers in the future. But that benefits ALL whatevers, not just those exhibiting this behavior. Those that don’t seek revenge, would benefit just as much as those that do. That means, there is more risk, and only equal reward for the individual animals who have whatever gene(s) make them do this. This seems to me an example of thinking evolution would happen for the “good of the species”, when in reality it happens due to benefits at the individual/gene level.
For a moment, forget about whether animals are capable of vengeance or of any desire for justice.
Observation shows that a LOT of prey animals, maybe most, quickly forget about neighbors and relatives who are eaten. If, say, a group of lions takes down a gazelle or zebra, the rest of the herd runs off a short distance, then goes back to grazing non-chalantly (after all, if the lions are busy eating Joe, they won’t be bothering the rest of the herd for a while).
If a young penguin is eaten by a leopard seal, its parents seem to forget about the chick fairly quickly.
There ARE animals that appear to mourn for dead friends and relatives… but a lot of them seem to forget dead friends and relatives completely, within seconds.
Since I recently read The Selfish Gene for the first time, I think you may be right, MisterW.
But one of the points of “The Selfish Gene” is that a behavior or characteristic that benifits the group also “benifits” the gene if the group is closely related because they likely share the gene in question.
Yeah, offspring share ~50% of your genes so are best to protect. Nieces/nephews have ~25% so it doesn’t mean that protecting your herd by killing predators is pointless. Keeping in mind that that does not mean that this is the reason for this behavior.
Yeah, but are the types of animal groups that we are talking about ever related to that extent? In the Selfish Gene they examine initially puzzling behavior in animals that are much more related than what we are talking about – bees, termites, etc. Do they talk about naked mole rats in that book? In any case, these groups are very highly related.
I agree. I don’t think non-human animals have the understanding of cause and effect to sustain the concept of revenge.
Revenge implies the predator’s offspring were killed because of the predator killing a member of the prey animal’s family. The concept requires both the predator and the prey to understand the connection between the two killings and for the predator to understand that if it kills the prey’s offspring today the prey will kill its offspring in the future. And I don’t think animals can grasp a concept like this.
Prey animals may kill a predator’s offspring when it’s possible. But that’s just an instinctive attempt to reduce the predator population not revenge for anything that particular predator may have done. Predators kill prey when they can and prey kill predators when they can without any connections between the killings.
What s/he said.
Not as much as groups of insects of course, but I was thinking about the example above of the birds and it seems likely that birds that flock together might be somewhat related. Elephants were also mentioned upthread and they travel in matriarchal groups so they would be closely related.
Some corvids are well known to attack -if not to kill- anything that interferes with their nests- whether or not the young are killed. They don’t only do this immediately, but they appear to remember individual humans (I don’t think any studies have been done on identifying other individual predators) for years, and will attack or harrass them on sight from then on. They even pass the knowledge on sometimes, so birds that never saw the original incident can initiate the response.
I’d certainly expect apes and some monkeys to be capable of vengeance, given their memory and social skills. Gorilla families will fight to the death to protect their young, and they don’t stop if the baby dies- but given their group structure, a threat to a baby is probably a threat to the whole group; babies aren’t wandering off alone. Apes can certainly hold a grudge for years; ask anyone who’s ever pissed one off…
There doesn’t have to be an advantage, just no disadvantage.
And, in humans, the advantage is the closer knit community, higher intelligence, etc. In other words, the desire for revenge is the side effect of other helpful traits. If it can happen in humans, it can happen in anyone else.
Plus, what exactly motivates an africanized bee to sting people who have killed others of its kind when it could just run away and be fine?
Maybe not what you had in mind, but the Essex was a whaling ship that was attacked by large sperm whale. The book Moby Dick was inspired by this incident, well known at the time. There’s no way to know why, but some accounts imply it was an act of revenge by the whale.
I don’t have a cite handy but I would be shocked if chimps and other apes don’t try to get revenge in some instances.
Animal trainers seem to think that some wild cats will keep track of past slights and look for an opportunity to get revenge. Also, a lot of people with pets are familiar with them taking a dump somewhere as revenge for when you piss them off. It isn’t murder but it is revenge.
I think you may find several advantages in an animal for getting revenge. #1 it makes the other animal think twice about attacking. I just watched a few videos of squirrels killing bull snakes. Cape buffalo will kill any lion they can manage to catch off guard. Moose, elk and even deer will kill coyotes and young wolves. I think it has more to do with opportunistic killing of enemies than true revenge though.
The whaleship Essex comes to mind.