From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Thu Jan 14 1999 - 10:46:45 MST
Ian Goddard [Ian@Goddard.net] wrote:
>If mice are in low-crowed environments but
> get violent in high crowding, but each condition
> is under laboratory conditions where the mice are
> not hunting for food in either scenario, they are
> deprived of hunting situations equally in both
> low and high crowing scenarios. This would tend
> to suggest that hunting depravation is Not the
> cause of increasing violence upon crowding,
What if the mice are programmed to switch from scavenging to actively
hunting at high population levels, regardless of food availability? I
have no evidence for it, so I'm probably hopelessly incorrect, but I
could see that *in their natural circumstances* at a low population level
they'd do well as scavengers but at high population levels they'd have
to search more actively. Evolution could have built in some suitable
programming based on the population density (e.g. level of mouse scent)
rather than food availability.
Either way further experimentation would be required to decide the issue;
I don't think it's as clear-cut as you believe.
Mark
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