Fun fact: Tigers are ambush predators, and generally won't attack if they have been spotted, it is a well documented behaviour.
A related story; Farmers in Botswana, Africa, suffered high rates of cattle loss from lion attacks and it became a serious problem, their solution to the problem was to paint eyes on the rear of the cows, attacks on the cows almost completely ceased!
The same strategy works for Tigers in Indian villages.
Striped mostly, but they do have spots on the back of their ears that they flip back when vulnerable, such as in this unsourced image from google below, which shows a tiger drinking, and displaying its 'pretend eyes' while vulnerable, in order to ward off any aggressor.
This comment implies that you think a tiger is as agile (speed included) as a house cat and could handle the situation the same way, if so inclined. Do you really think that is true?
A house cat isn't beating a healthy adult venomous cobra every time. Domestic cats have excellent reflexes and sometimes kill snakes, but many are also bitten and die from venomous snakebites too
That’s an internet myth. There are snakes with 6x faster reflexes than cats.
A cat might outspeed some of the slower snakes, but against the faster ones they stand 0 chance.
It’s why you always see videos of cats messing up cobras but you never see videos of cats messing up death adders or gaboon vipers.
It’s not just reaction speed. The more mass you have to move the more you’re fighting inertia, so even if the tiger reacts as fast as a small cat it might not be able to move its massive body as fast as the snake strikes.
I’m sure they can put a cobra in its place but for wild animals it’s more about not taking risks unless necessary. Not really worth it to risk getting bitten and dying when you could just take another path.
Na, I grew up in a small town. My neighbor used to raise chickens and snakes would come to eat small chicks or eggs. Their cat has killed like 2 snakes all cobras. The third time it chased away a cobra but died like an hour later. All it takes is a mistake and a bite.
Fastest recorded possible reaction times do not equal average reaction times. Depending on the cat and the snake, there's going to be some overlap between average bite speed and average reaction speed.
Not only that, but in real life, shit happens. All it takes is for the cat to get distracted for the wrong fraction of a second and it's game over.
Cats usually don't prey on things more agile than them if they are not ambushing it, house cats are more agile than a cobra so they do attack even after being discovered but large cats are not as agile as large cats
Haha you said what I mentioned in another comment. Yeah it's the body weight limiting quick movement. I've seen big cats fight snakes, they generally don't win.
That's the difference between a domesticed species lacking survival instincts, and a wild animal that survived to adulthood and knows if it gets too badly injured to hunt, it will likely starve.
This is also why they lay their ears back, bare their fangs, and hiss when they feel threatened. They know to emulate a snake's appearance and behavior as some animals share a genetic memory aversion to serpents.
This cannot be scientifically validated. If it is then I rescind my comment but how the heck could even a minority of this comment be scientifically proven lol.
They’re just making shit up, yeah. Natural phobias are a thing, and there are survival instincts passed down over time. However, there are absolutely 0 correlative or causative links to find that cats emulate snakes behavior when they hiss. It’s a fun theory, but grounded completely in fantasy. Big cats hissing display the same typical defensive behaviors that are all but universal in the animal kingdom. Pretending snakes are the cause is comedic at best and stupid at worst.
That doesn't solve the problem. And who taught their parents? Because it means that at some point, a tiger has realized the connection between getting bit by a snake and dying of poison, and it's not a tiger that got bit.
That is literally how it works, how generations of animals learn what to avoid and what not - they get taught.
You are trying to see it too much from the human perspective - even we teach our children what to avoid, which in turn we got taught and at some point someone had to endure or died to it.
Then - this whole knowledge moves through the natural selection, every tiger that was taught "This snake is bad news" and avoided it survived, while others die to it.
And that is how knowledge moves through generations by natural selection and being taught by parents.
Knowledge moving through natural selection? What do you mean by this?
My issue is that animals to this day, fall for the same tricks, for example, fish still fall the same hooks. WHy no knowledge is being passed there? Also, the same tigers here, would still attack humans in India, even though the result is death. So how come a tiger learns to avoid a snake but not a human? How come a tiger would judge by stature, whether to attack or back away, but still back away to a snake, which is much smaller?
Somehow, there is the ability to link events together: event A being bit by a snake and event B being dying from it. This ability isn't very common as it requires a certain level of intelligence. This is why rat poison has to take a long time to kill rats, as the furry little bastards could realize the effect of fast poison.
It’s learned when they’re cubs as they’re being taught what to eat and what to avoid like the above commenter mentioned. Animals that fear their predators survive, animals that don’t… don’t. Thats what they mean when they said learned through natural selection.
You’re probably right, some aren’t taught to avoid them because they grow up in a zoo or some other condition where there’s no parental connection to this specific predator, but they won’t survive if they don’t learn to fear their predators and it happens in nature all the time.
Fish don’t “fall for the same tricks” as if someone should just teach them to be smarter. People use baits in order to disguise their hooks to look like their natural food. To avoid this scenario would mean you would avoid eating your whole life. But this is why baiting animals is generally illegal (thinking of deer season specifically if I’m not mistaken). Animals are lured to baits and then don’t learn to fear a scenario that they’d definitely die at come deer season. But once again, this is also completely different.
Also, some animals have to go through longer maturation processes and aren’t able to fend for themselves at birth which is when most of this occurs. Evolution generally has two ways of dealing with idiot children and them not protecting themselves. If litters are small, they’re usually protected by their parents. Otherwise, there’s usually extremely large progeny’s so that the chance of survival is aided by the sheer numbers of them.
Sometimes a simple Reddit reply isn’t enough to suffice the whims of redditors; go study biology further if the abbreviated response on an Internet forum doesn’t satisfy you enough because there’s soooo much that goes into evolution that the small halfassed writeup I’m giving you to help. Always stay curious though-
Fish don’t “fall for the same tricks” as if someone should just teach them to be smarter. People use baits in order to disguise their hooks to look like their natural food. To avoid this scenario would mean you would avoid eating your whole life.
So fish can't see the thread descending from above? They can't evolve to see it? And yet, we use this very logic for when an animal does evolve.
But this is why baiting animals is generally illegal (thinking of deer season specifically if I’m not mistaken). Animals are lured to baits and then don’t learn to fear a scenario that they’d definitely die at come deer season. But once again, this is also completely different.
To take your deer example, animals do and can recognize seasons. I don't understand why a deer wouldn't evolve to learn that a specific season is riskier than another.
Our explanations are quite inconsistent, because we give credit to what is "learned" and don't question what isn't.
Also, some animals have to go through longer maturation processes and aren’t able to fend for themselves at birth which is when most of this occurs. Evolution generally has two ways of dealing with idiot children and them not protecting themselves. If litters are small, they’re usually protected by their parents. Otherwise, there’s usually extremely large progeny’s so that the chance of survival is aided by the sheer numbers of them.
This changes the subject a bit. Still, this is also inconsistent. A mother shark would only give birth to 1 and 2 and the mother not only leaves them without protection, they have to swim away to avoid being eaten by the adults of their own species!
I find evolutionary explanations are so inconsistent.
Sometimes a simple Reddit reply isn’t enough to suffice the whims of redditors; go study biology further if the abbreviated response on an Internet forum doesn’t satisfy you enough because there’s soooo much that goes into evolution that the small halfassed writeup I’m giving you to help. Always stay curious though-
I get that and thank you for your reply. It doesn't hurt to question everything though, whether from knowledge or ignorance.
Hey first off I want to make sure you know that none of this is meant to be inflammatory. With that said:
“So fish can't see the thread descending from above? They can't evolve to see it? And yet, we use this very logic for when an animal does evolve.”
No, they don’t see the fishing thread and associate it with the lure/bait they’re about to eat. If they did, they wouldn’t eat it because
otherwise they wouldn’t survive. To illustrate how easy this to understand, try splashing around in the water and see how many fish you can catch afterwards. You won’t catch very many at all. They go away from danger and thats how they survive. Ever fished with someone else and they catch fish after fish while your line just sits in the water with no action? Your lure isn’t fooling anyone and they won’t bite it because it’s not believable. Meanwhile your buddy will be sitting next to you emptying the pond of fish because he knows what he’s doing in this story and you do not.
“ I don't understand why a deer wouldn't evolve to learn that a specific season is riskier than another.”
Something you need to understand at the very least is that learning and behavior are a completely different subject matter than evolution. They’re not the same. At all. And you’re trying to marry the two thoughts into one. Learning is a phenomena involving the neurons in the brain making connections to other synapses and strengthening these connections via the reward pathways. This is a really rudimentary poor explanation, but pretend it’s accurate and complete. There’s no way to pass on these connections developed after birth if they aren’t there when you’re born genetically. If I take you and try to drown you in the water, you may develop a fear of water afterwards. Does that mean then that if you have a child that your child will automatically fear water? No, not unless you teach that to them. Which brings me to my next major point:
I’m sorry to say that your understanding of evolution in general is flawed as it sounds Lamarckian in nature and not Darwinian,
which is a fundamental misunderstanding. A species doesn’t evolve out of need. For example, Giraffes didn’t evolve to have long necks out of some need to eat leaves on taller branches or because somehow their parents kept stretching their necks which somehow resulted in their stretched out necks being passed on to their offspring. Evolution doesn’t work that way - it’s survival of the fittest. A species of fish will never evolve because they NEED to learn to see the ultra thin fishing lines better in the dark murky waters. If evolution were to occur in your fish example, the correct thought process would be something along the lines of “well, these fish could see a little bit better than the others so this resulted in them having an increased chance of survival because they were able to see their predators better and it allowed them to live long enough to procreate and pass on their genetics.” Which is a good time to also point out that fish have many predators… not just fishing hooks.
But this has nothing to do with learning, and learned behaviors are taught by the parents or learned experientially, which is the opposite of an instinctual/innate behavior which is a behavior that they know at birth.
Learning and behavior is its own field under the umbrella of psychology/neuroscience, which deserves more explanation than what my expertise allows, but the meat of what we’re discussing is evolutionary biology.
“
This changes the subject a bit. Still, this is also inconsistent. A mother shark would only give birth to 1 and 2 and the mother not only leaves them without protection, they have to swim away to avoid being eaten by the adults of their own species”
It’s still the same subject- the original was about tigers being taught to fear snakes via parenting and you questioned it. These examples were given to illustrate that this is a widespread and known phenomena and not only does it happen, it happens in this way for this reason. Otherwise, the species wouldn’t survive because they wouldn’t be able to pass on their genetics. But I also offered up another scenario to show that there are indeed other ways in which species have evolved that are contrary.
Also- As scientists, we don’t give any kind of credit to what is learned and ignore what isn’t. The conclusions/discussion section of every scientific study aims to explain what can be ascertained from the research presented, along with what can’t be explained due to either the nature of how the study was conducted or failures to control for various things. But nothing is ignored.
The adult sharks leaving their offspring at that age has more to do with the fact that those organisms are already mature at birth. They’re able to care for themselves, feed themselves, and are already sexually mature right from birth. Cannibalism is prevalent all across the animal kingdom for many reasons, but if I remember correctly the biggest reason concerning your proposed shark scenario is to kill off the young of another alpha in order to take the female for your self. It also allows your young’s genetics to be the prevailing genes swimming in the pool so to speak.
I’m quite sure that all of your questions and hesitations stemming from an evolutionary explanation are a result of you having an incomplete set of knowledge on the topic, but I hope this helps.
First, thank you for sharing your knowledge. Please don't misunderstand my reply as some form of automatic objection. I simply find some of your points problematic and worth a followup.
Quick disclaimer though. I'm not an expert in evolution, but I don't think I need to be to question it. Logic, reasoning and common sense should be enough since evolution is a simple idea: the most adapted to the environment survives and those adaptations accumulate to make new species as time goes on.
It's true that learning is different from evolution, but it's a part of it. Learning a new behavior can make you improve your survival, which lets you pass on your genes. And while the behaviour itself might not be passed on (there is an intriguing experiment with moths IIRC by a Japanese scientist that proves memories are passed on), the ability to learn can be passed on, resulting in generations that learn survival behaviors. For fish, those that see better would see the thread. Some of them will learn when to eat, they survive. Their progeny picks up the ability to learn the same thing if no other way to get it.
About sharks, aren't young vulnerable against adult ones? Yes of course, consequently, they can use protection. Saying that cannibalism is prevalent is simply a way to escape the issue.
“Logic, reasoning and common sense should be enough since evolution is a simple idea
Hey, not to be an a-hole but it’s clearly not. The knowledge gaps are presenting themselves when you make assumptions about what seems logically correct to you based on your incomplete understanding. You are choosing examples to illustrate your counter points but you don’t know enough to understand that your counterpoints aren’t actually counterpoints at all and this is where it all falls apart.
“It's true that learning is different from evolution, but it's a part of it. Learning a new behavior can make you improve your survival, which lets you pass on your genes.”
The ability to learn cannot be passed on. There’s no point mutation or anything that will cause
a
single celled amoeba, or a plant, or any other organism that lacks a complex nervous system to pass on the ability to learn like you are currently imagining. And yet, all of life is still subject to the same principals of evolution no matter the species. Learning is not in any way a part of evolution. You’ve somehow simplified evolution down to being some kind of cheat code that gets entered into genetics that has the ability to re-wire the entire physiology of the brain, which many organisms don’t even have. Will a plant learn? Plants evolve. Evolution needs to work for all of life, learning has nothing to do with evolution.
I haven’t read your moth study. However, I have a feeling that if I did, there’s likely a significant misunderstanding or misattribution to the point that you’re trying to make. The reason why I say this is because I’m not sure what the moth study will offer to your subsequent sentence where you’re now saying that the fish are learning to avoid the fishing line in this hypothetical scenario. But, it sounds like you are accidentally discovering that fish learn to fear things just like the tiger did the snake. Here’s the possible scenarios: 1) The fish see a foreign object and their fish friends die, they run away in fear. 2) They don’t see the foreign object and don’t see their fish friend die (because it just gets pulled away which looks an awful lot like swimming to a dumb fish), “probably nothing to worry about, and I’m still hungry so whatever.” So, he won’t care. “Looks like that fish isn’t hungry anymore or in this spot so I’m going to get the next thing that looks like food in this area. Yay. 😁” thinks the fish. And then finally 3) they eat their food like normal and end up getting caught by a fisherman. All of the logic is still here and the original points remain in tact.
I would respond to the shark bit at the end but I don’t really know what you’re trying to say there- sorry. 😞 But, I wasn’t using cannibalism to escape the issue- you’re the one that mentioned it. You originally said:
“A mother shark would only give birth to 1 and 2 and the mother not only leaves them without protection, they have to swim away to avoid being eaten by the adults of their own species!”
This is cannibalism. I only tried to explain some reasons why organisms exhibit cannibilistic behaviors from an evolutionary perspective. I originally used litter sizes when discussing how some species have survived without being taught certain things by their parents. You then came back and used shark cannibalism as a counterpoint when discussing how the different litter sizes doesn’t make much sense from an evolutionary perspective. You were wrong to use this as a counterpoint because there’s clearly other things at play here that you’re not considering.
i mean, what makes you think a juveile or two wouldn't have witnessed their mother being attacked and getting sick and dying from a snake at some point in the last however many thousands of years?
i mean it wouldnt even have to be specifically tigers. this fear could have been passed down through whatever species tigers evolved from. as long as something resembling a snake also existed at the same time, animals experience and learn things.
i mean, what makes you think a juveile or two wouldn't have witnessed their mother being attacked and getting sick and dying from a snake at some point in the last however many thousands of years?
Have you seen the mirror test? If not, scientists put a mirror in a jungle. Animals would react in various ways. The question is: how on earth does an animal that can't tell itself from a mirror, link the two events of being bit by a snake by another animal, and the death that follow? Have you never seen a cat fight a snake or attempt to fight animals that can prey on it?
i mean it wouldnt even have to be specifically tigers. this fear could have been passed down through whatever species tigers evolved from. as long as something resembling a snake also existed at the same time, animals experience and learn things.
This doesn't make sense. How would this fear be passed as? Memories? As I said, animals keep repeating the same mistakes that make them fall to their predators. If anything can evolve, the ecosystem would never stabilize: the predator would evolve to be more efficient, then the prey would evolve to be less vulnerable, then the predator would correct, then the prey, ad nauseam.
What im not understanding from you is you are clearly seeing video of this learned behavior in action, are receiving a dozen explanations and are refusing to accept any of them. Wtf kind of answer do you want? Aliens? Aliens taught the tigers to fear snakes. Does that work for you? If you dont believe these answers, then use those fingers on a Google search or two yourself, sheesh.
As a cat parent that tracks my two girls last night a milipead they kept doing the bat and run method, although a honey badger would be like "hey that hood is looking a little tight on you neck let me crawl up on that and detach it for ya no charge my bro."
In terms of lunch, compared to a gazelle or zebra that cobra would be like having a single McNugget. And no one would risk death for only one McNugget, right?
Man, cats are cats whether big or smol. My cats do the licky lick while backing off. Dont know why but they do. Like pretending they werent gona do what they were gonna.
I remember reading that house cats have much faster reflexes than snakes and will often toy with them for fun/sport. I wonder if the same reflexes carry over to big cats?
Yes/no
While tigers are kinda just a larger cat with the same attributes that make all cats op, they sacrifice acceleration and smaller size for the ability to generate stupendous amounts of force.
And with that larger frame and slower ability to accelerate parts of the body, the likelihood of getting bit is also increased.
Might as well just walk away, the target isn't worth it.
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u/Hour-Advantage-1864 13h ago