One of my work responsibilities is teaching high school students about animal abuse, and one of the topics I cover is dogfighting. To counter the idea that fighting comes naturally to dogs, I explain something that I read a few years ago: animals do not routinely fight to the death with members of the same species. Instead, when two animals clash in the wild, they do a lot of posturing, and then sometimes a few clashes, but as soon as one animal demonstrates dominance, the two animals back away. Animals that don’t end fights before lethality are less likely to survive to reproduce, I explain: even the winner of the fight is likely to suffer serious injuries that reduce their chances of reproduction. Natural selection tends to weed out animals that engage in fatal fighting, and so dogfighters engage in intensive inbreeding and then abusive training and drugging regimens to get dogs to fight to the death.
But this morning I read something that hinted at broad fatal fights between members of the same species, in a fairly reliable source (Stephen Pinker’s The Blank Slate). It didn’t offer details. Does anyone know the truth of this?
If animals routinely fight to the death in the wild–especially if wolves fight to the death in the wild on a routine basis–I’ll need to change my program.
Solenodons fight to the death, though it’s not really their fault. They’re not immune to their own venom, so the loser in a fight tends to be envenomated and die.
Interesting! I’ve found two different contradictory cites on this. One says that “When solenodons fight in captivity the light wounds inflicted are fatal.” The other says that “Solenodons may fight each other on first meeting, but eventually they establish a dominance relationship and live together in captivity in relative harmony.” Granted, the second is a Geocities site, but it makes more evolutionary sense for a social creature: if a social creature is prone to lethal fights, how on earth do its members survive to reproduce?
(Note that solenodons are endangered because of introduced predators, not because of one another).
Thanks for introducing me to these critters, though–they’re fascinating!
It depends. If they’re fighting for sexual dominance, then it’s common to fight until the loser backs off. If the fight is over territory, that can be different. But I think you have to be careful about generalizing. Someone more expert than I am can probably talk about the propensity of different groups of animals (mammals vs reptiles vs athropods, for example) to either fight to the death or just until dominance has been established. Your question might have a different answer depending on how broadly you are casting your net.
We do know that chimps will seek out and kill the males in rival troops in what looks like a war-like fashion. There has also been a recent documentation of wolves killing and eating rival packs (probably due to a decline in the prey animal population). And we humans are animals, too, remember. I think there have been a few documented cases of humans killing other humans.
So, what do you mean by “often”? What do you mean by “members of the same species” (ie, are we talking mammals only)?
Male siamese fighting fish will fight till the death, with both male and female fish. If a female turns up, the male will try to mate with her, and if unsuccessful, will kill her.
It’s probably important to distinguish between intra and inter group fighting (for social animals). The survival mechanism for the two types of behaviors are likely to be quite different.
I recall mulling over this after reading many bookms and articles on animal behavior. LHOD is clearly ereferring to non-human behavior. Whether mammal, reptile, fish, or arthropod, I was impressed with how often, in both sexual and territorial disputes, animals will not fight “to the death”. Force escalates to a certain point, but almost never to its greatest extreme. You read Niko Tinbergen or other naturalists, and you’re always confronted with a variety of submissive responses and few out-and-out killers of their own kind.
There are exceptions. Queen bees looking for dominance in a hive will fight to the death. I’ve heard about chimp “wars”, but not the wolves John Mace mentions (although he seems to indicate that that’s caused by unusual circumstances). I’ve heard the bit about Siamese Fighting Fish, but I heard it from Ernst Stavro Blofeld in “From Russia With Love”, so I don’t trust it very far. A quick internet search shows them to be very territorial and aggressive, so I guess it’s true.
By the way, guppies and other fish do eat their young. I thought this was tragicuntil we kept a tank of tropical fish. In a short while we had only guppie. Shortlyu after that we had a lot of guppies. That’s when I realized that the problem wasn’t that they ate their young, but that they didn’t do it enough.
Sadly, because of an association with an ex-friend/moron, I’ve actually seen this in real life. It’s not very dramatic, and doesn’t last very long, but one fish is certainly dead at the end.
Ants of the same species kill each other routinely, and I believe some species will even wipe out whole colonies of the same species in the right circumstances.
These are all persuasive answers, and it looks as if I need to change this part of the presentation. Is there a way for me to make this point accurately, or do I need to scrap it entirely? For example, John’s account of wolves killing and eating other packs: under what circumstances does that occur, and do the victims fight to the death or do they try to retreat? Dog fighters breed and train dogs so that they will continue attacking even when they’ve been mortally wounded; this is the behavior that seems grotesque to me.
(Of course, I could also approach it by pointing out that “natural” and “ethical” are clearly not the same thing, but I’m afraid that this would lead me onto a tangent that would take up most of the class).
I still think you need to narrow down your topic. How about just talking about “dogs”? The article I read about wolves made it sound like it was highly unusual, and due to a precipitous drop in the moose population of that particular area.
If you’re talking about dog fighting, then the dogs in question probably don’t view each other as members of the same pack, so we’re talking about inter-group fighting. Plus, dogs are highly intellgent and therefore less dependent on being stuck with instictive behavior that’s hard to modify.
I think the female praying mantis not only killing, but devouring the male after mating kind of disproves that “survive to reproduce” theory.
Grizzly bears do a lot of posturing and fighting…and killing.
If your strategy for arguing against dogfighting is that it isn’t a “natural behavior”, I think it is a losing cause. The fact is, killing within species for some reasons understood and other reasons not so well understood, does occur. And, of course, you might also be faced with the question of just what WE humans are doing in Iraq and Afganistan !
I am certainly not in favor of animal abuse. And perhaps the angle you should take, as with dog fighting, is that humans may be the only species that “manipulates” other species to kill each other - for purely entertainment purposes. But if you ask me, dog fighting is but a small aspect of “animal abuse”. The biggest in my opinion would simply be neglect (those houses they find with 100’s of cats running wild).
I think your cause is a noble and worthwhile one. But drawing on “nature” to back up your case is a dangerous one. The fact is, a LOT of bizarre stuff goes on in nature, so it is tough to make an iron-clad case.
To clarify a few things:
-I’m not so much arguing that dogfighting is wrong because it’s unnatural, as I am refuting dogfighting apologists who claim that it is natural, that the dogs are just following their instincts. While this is a fallacious defense (even if it’s natural, that doesn’t mean we may ethically encourage it, as natural and ethical aren’t related to one another), explaining the fallacy is difficult, time-consuming, and controversial. If the facts underpinning the fallacy are incorrect–if this is not natural behavior–then the argument can be refuted by addressing the false facts.
-I talk with about half a dozen or so high school classes a year. It’s not common for me to get a class in which a third of the students have witnessed a staged dogfight, but it happens about as often as my getting a class in which none of the students admit to having witnessed such a fight. (I say “admits to” because attending a dogfight is a serious crime in North Carolina–while I don’t tell students this before I ask them, and while I don’t report students who admit to it, some may understandably be reluctant to tell me).
-My presentation on animal abuse is about 90 minutes long; dogfighting comprises about a quarter of that time. I also talk with them about negligence, deliberate cruelty, and animal hoarding.
John, I’m not sure I follow you on the business about dogs being more intelligent. Can you explain that argument more fully? I mean, sure, they’re more intelligent than a praying mantis, but I’m not clearn on how to connect that into an argument about dogfighting.
I was using “intelligent” more in the sense of adaptable or flexible. I doubt there is an instinct “not to kill” embedding in their genes (although they may instinctively cool off on the attack if a dog assumes a submissive posture).
But let’s face it… dogs do naturally fight to establish dominance and to defend territory. It’s not much of a stretch to teach them to keep going until great bodily harm is done. What’s “unnatural” about a dog fighting is that they’re confined to a pen, with no place to escape. A one-on-one fight in the wild will almost certainly end with one dog high tailing it out of there, if the other dog doesn’t respond to a signalling of deafeat by the weak dog assuming a submissive posture. By restricting the territory, you highten the level of aggression. This is the classic experiment on the environmental eftects on aggressive behavior. I can give you all kinds of cites about this if you’re not able to find any yourself.
Sure, dogs definitely fight to establish dominance–and you’re right that fights normally end with one dog stopping the fight. My understanding, however, is that running away isn’t always what happens (indeed, may not be the best idea, as that can trigger the other dog’s predator instinct and lead to a chase): normally the dog who submits does so by adopting a submissive posture, e.g., rolling over and exposing his neck.
Dogfighters talk about a dog being “game,” that is, fighting past the point of being wounded. That’s not just a trait of being in a confined space–a non-game dog in a confined space will adopt a submissive posture. When I talk about how animals behave in nature, perhaps I should limit myself to talking about wild dogs and wolves: it seems from responses here that lethal fights are the exception, not the norm, in canine dominance conflicts.
Again, it depends. How does one dog view the other? If he sees him as a fellow pack member, he’s loking for a submissive display. But if he views him as an outsider, he’s looking to eject him from his territory, submissive display or not. An outsider isn’t automatically allowed into the pack just because he takes a submissive pose. And if he can’t get out of the territory, it’s not all that clear what will happen. Add to that the training that the dogs get, and it’s unlcear at all if a submissive pose will stop the other dog from fighting.
That’s a very good point. So I can reasonably tell students that in the wild, most dog fights will:
a) be dominance fights between members of the same pack; these fights should generally end quickly and without serious injury to either member, with one dog adopting a submissive pose; or
b) be territory fights between two strange dogs; these fights are more vicious, but will generally end with one dog running away.
Dogfighters breed dogs, torture dogs, and restrict fighting space to prevent either of these things from occurring.
I saw a documentary recently about big cats in Africa, I think it was lions, and I’m pretty sure a female killed another female in a fight. The fight was just intense, not to immediate death, but the results were fatal.
