Acquired behavior, or thinking?

Now this all reminds me of the old boy that found himself in bed with the ugliest woman you can imagine and had his arm trapped under her! Rather than chance waking her he simply chewed his own arm off...hence the term "Coyote Ugly" came to be. Sorry, I couldn't resist!
Nikonut :rolleyes:
 
I heard its better to chew both arms off,because when she wakes up she'll be looking for a one-armed man. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
NY Yote, I have to disagree with Joe's theory about crows counting. I use that technique and the crows always come back in when the truck leaves. The other disagreement is the splitting of a crows tongue. Another old wives tale. I've had crows for pets. One of them learned to say a few words. His tongue was never split.

(edit) I'll check out Richard Dawkins books.
 
Nasa...

I wasnt busting your chops before about your thoughts. I think if you are interested in theory then Dawkins books will def. interest you. I would suggest reading the SELFISH GENE first. The one study I was refering to was a published article and hopefully I will be able to track it down. However if you look around for studys you will find that crows are known to be able to count..

NY Yote
 
No problem NY, it didn't come across that way. And you're right, I am interested. As for the crows, though.... The ones I've shot sure couldn't count for squat. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
I have to address this...,

Coyotes arent going to know how to react with an elephant but do know what to do when its leg is caught in a trap. I strongly believe that a coyote "thinks" to chew its leg off as I believe it has the power to devise a way to get free.

There are a lot of people - trappers, wildlife biologists, furbearer managers, researchers - that have spent the last decade butt deep in devising best management practices for trapping in the United States that will read that paragraph and fall over dead in their chairs at the assumption that a coyote would chew its leg off in a trap to escape and that they would consciously choose chewing as a means to an end. Not busting your chops, Tommy, but that's a myth perpetuated by bad jokes and ugly women.

In truth, as eluded to by several other contributors, self mutilation by trapped animals is limited to raccoons, skunks, and possums for the most part, and is caused by using oversized traps that reult in fractures at the level of the jaws, then leading to twist outs, or in the case of coons, using traps with too large of jaw spread that allows the coon to get his nose in between the inside of the jaws and the pan of the trap and then chew on the foot which has become numb due to the tamponading affect of blood. There has been no documented instance that I am aware of where chewing and self mutilation took place or was directed at any part of the limb above the level of the jaw. Please, please, please - as a service to trappers, do not cite this type of event without being able to provide incontravertible proof that it has occurred.

Now, about how smart a coyote is - no, they are not as smart as we are. If they were, they'd be day trading in tech stocks and living in nice houses rather than a miserable hole in the ground.

Can they learn? IMO, yes. I think they have a limited ability to learn from personal experience and that they possess a limited ability to think in terms of cause and effect. But, that's as far as their thinking goes. I don't think they can anticipate consequences that they have not personally experienced before. Rather, they can enter a situation, recognize circumstances as they evolve and anticipate the potential for a recurrence of either a positive or negative outcome. If they couldn't, they'd never know to respond to a squealing rabbit. After all, that sound - a sound they hear every day of their lives - is not something they are born knowing what it is. They learn. And we, as the rat bastard hunters we are, and being of higher cognitive capacity, have learned how to take advantage of their gullibility. Now, if coyotes were as smart as we, they wold have figured out a way to artificially create an attractant for rodents or rabbits, then actually fabricate said attractant and apply it in such a way as to attract and subsequently kill the bunny.

As is the case with many lesser life forms respective of thought and rationalization, coyotes lack the awareness of "zero". What that means is that they don't understand that something exists even though it isn't in front of them. Us, by contrast ( or most of us), do understand this concept. For example, I know I like lasagna and cheesecake, and I am aware that both exist, even though I don't presently have either of them, or the ingredients to make either of them in my house, let alone in front of me.

The coyote may not be able to sit around thinking about rabbits because he simply isn't able to do so. But, if he hears the telltale "wah, wah, wah" of a rabbit being throttled, that sound is immediately associated with food, triggering a hunger response and the desire to eat. He responds and is generally rewarded with lunch, every single time except once, assuming the caller can shoot. Once he hears the squeals, those sounds trigger a cascade of rudimentary thought processes leading to a series of causes and effects. In the absence of the initial trigger (cause) I don't think he sits around thinking about anything in particular.

On the other hand, anyone that relies on howling and has used it in different regions of the country just has to marvel at the fact that these animals do appear to communicate at some level and that a challenge bark-howl in AZ is eerily similar to the same vocalization in ND. If they can't "think", per se, or "learn", per se, how do they do that?
 
I love these kinds of discussions. They bring out the Best, as well as, the Worst in people. These threads have probably told us more about how some of the people on this board think, than it did about if or how coyotes do.
We have some very adroit analysts among us. Well done, everyone. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
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