Animal behaviour articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Animals track odour trails to find food, a mate or to steer clear of danger. Bhalla and colleagues combine behavioural and physiological measurements to show that rats can track surface-borne odours with near-optimal sampling and are able to predict the path direction on encountering a bifurcation.

    • Adil Ghani Khan
    • , Manaswini Sarangi
    •  & Upinder Singh Bhalla

  • Article |

    Human children use referential gestures such as showing, offering and pointing, which are thought to form the foundation of language skills. Here, evidence is provided of ravens (Corvus corax) using showing and offering to direct other's attention, as an example of referential gesturing in a non-primate lineage.

    • Simone Pika
    •  & Thomas Bugnyar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about the way bats recognize large objects, such as trees, buildings or a lake. Greif and Siemers show that bodies of water are recognized solely by echolocation, and that this ability is innate, thus smooth surfaces are recognized as water by naive juvenile bats.

    • Stefan Greif
    •  & Björn M. Siemers

  • Article |

    Studying the behaviour of captive mice requires considerable time and effort. Here, video-based software is designed and implemented to automatically quantitate mouse behaviour; the system performs well in comparison with manual human observations.

    • Hueihan Jhuang
    • , Estibaliz Garrote
    •  & Thomas Serre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spotted hyaenas live in clans with a hierarchy of females with different social ranks. In this paper, the sons of high-ranking female hyaenas are shown to have greater fitness than sons born of mothers of medium and low rank. This study highlights the importance of maternal effects in evolution.

    • Oliver P. Höner
    • , Bettina Wachter
    •  & Marion L. East

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Female water striders have evolved a strategy to control the frequency of copulation. In this article, male water striders are shown to attract predators during copulation to coerce the female into yielding more quickly. These findings demonstrate how adaptive behaviour may be influenced by predation.

    • Chang S. Han
    •  & Piotr G. Jablonski

  • Article |

    Adoption is an altruistic behaviour that incurs parental costs. Gorrellet al. examined more than 2,000 squirrel litters and showed that red squirrels adopt only their kin, resulting in an increase in their inclusive fitness. These data provide support for Hamilton's rule of altruism.

    • Jamieson C. Gorrell
    • , Andrew G. McAdam
    •  & Stan Boutin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many animals communicate through gestures, some caterpillars use scraping and drumming signals to ward off unwanted neighbours. Here, Scottet al. demonstrate that "leg-like" structures used by some caterpillar species to communicate evolved from legs that their ancestors used to walk.

    • Jaclyn L. Scott
    • , Akito Y. Kawahara
    •  & Jayne E. Yack

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