By David Wojick |November 24th, 2020|Environment|
In addition to studying complex human reasoning, I have been observing complex instinctive reasoning in animals for many years. Instinctive behavior is often thought of as simple, perhaps even mindless. I came to a very different conclusion, that an instinct is basically inherited expert knowledge. Instinctive behavior is often very complex, involving sophisticated concepts, expert knowledge and a lot of decision making.
So I wrote up my observations and hypotheses, in the form of a four year long series of 46 short blog articles. The blog title is Horse cognition and other critters (of which many are discussed). It runs around 30,000 words so there is lots of stuff.
My approach is one I call “robotic analysis” which means asking what a robot would have to sense, understand, know and decide in order to do what the animal does instinctively.
This does not mean the animal’s behavior is robotic, far from it. Artificial intelligence robotics tries to model intelligent behavior. For example, developing the self driving car required a lot of study on precisely what we do when we drive. Knowing the difference between a pedestrian, which can move, and a mailbox which cannot (except under extreme circumstances).
Here are snapshots of a few of the many blog articles, to give you the flavor of the findings:
The amazing cow circle. June 2015
A small herd of cows and their calves is threatened by dogs. The cows do not all face the dogs. Instead they form a defensive ring with each cow facing out. The calves go to the middle of the ring. Consider what is required. The cows have to recognize the threat as calling for a circle. They have to know how to form that circle, which is far from simple, especially since some are facing away from the dogs. The calves have to know to go to the center.
Baby behavior. May 2016
A baby bird hides under my riding mower as I approach, planning to mow. When I sit on the mower it runs out and hides under my truck. This baby knows when to hide, where to hide and how to hide. It also knows when to change hiding places. These are complex behaviors.
Instinctive learning. April 2016
A bird building a nest flies long distances to specific places to get materials. The bird must know what it wants at that point in construction and it must have already learned where the right stuff was.
Not knowing how to trot. October 2013
Two legged critters like us can only walk forward one step at a time, but four legged folks can do it a variety of ways. In horses one of these ways is the trot. However, most Tennessee Walking Houses cannot trot, even though they are as physically capable as other breeds that do trot, which is most of them. Walkers lack this instinctive knowledge.
I began this research many years ago when my wife and I, avid backpackers, camped near an active beaver pond. The beaver pair was still building their dam. My first career was designing earth dams for the US flood control program, so the dam interested me.
I was amazed to find that it was much more sophisticated than our dams, which are basically carefully prepared piles of dirt. The beaver dam was a lattice of sticks, supporting a mud and rock wall on the upstream face. Building this complex structure is an equally complex process, including felling trees for the wood materials. I discuss this in the December 2013 article Meet the beaver.
There is also a lot on the robotic analysis research method, as well as on the overall concept of an instinct as an unlearned body of expert knowledge.
When an expert looks at a situation that falls under their domain of expertise, they see and think things that non-experts cannot do. In many cases instinctive behavior in animals is just like that.
Animals live complex lives that we do not understand. Both domestic animal husbandry and wildlife management depend on how well we understand the animals we are caring for or care about. Robotic analysis is a way to understand a lot more.
Author
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see
http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html
For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see
http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/
Available for confidential research and consulting.
A very good choice of articles for this website.
I assume Moderator Charles Rotten is on vacation today?
I had previously read this at CFACT.
Wojick is consistently good.
Consistently interesting.
Rare for a Ph.D.
More consistent and concise than any other science writer.
You should place all his articles here.
Wohick did not pay me to write this.
I asked for “$1.75, until payday”.
But he turned me down.
“Moderator Charles Rotten”
I’m assuming your autocorrect is on overdrive today.
My autocorrect has taken over my computer,
Mr. Alflerts. My comments are out of my
control. I type in Ph.D. level comments
and the confuser sends deranged ranting
and raving to the website.
LOL…..
LOL!
The difficulty that I see for “climate emergency” response in “robotic analysis” is that a robot cannot learn from an imaginary situation .
It takes a human to respond with fear , avoidance etc , either learned or innate, to an imaginary situation.
Sorry. I imagine some will not like the imaginary naughty word in this :-
Enjoyed the Frank Zappa clip immensely farmerbraun. Thank you.
On the contrary, animals often spook at imagined threats that are not real. But only on a small, immediate scale. Our ability to do it globally over decades is an example of the downside of written language.
“animals often spook at imagined threats”
But in this case a threat is perceived – a real sensory cue has been mis-read or confused.
It’s a flight response.
A question I mused on is can the reaction of the sensory cue be modified by behaviour, or is it ‘hard wired’ (for want of a better term) into a person/creature.
Working example.
A few years ago I was shopping in my local city and walking down the pedestrian mall to go home. About 4m in front of me was some random and as I walked behind him I noticed he casually bent down and lifted either the phone or the purse (I never discovered which) from a girl seated on one of the many benches in the area.
My first thought was ‘Hang on? Did I just see that?’ and my second was the slightly less than helpful ‘OI!!!!’
The guy half turned, realised I was definitely referring to him and broke into a run.
So I instantly chased him.
(half can of coke in one hand, bag of shopping in the other, a figure of style and grace…)
Anyway, didn’t catch him. Reality kicked in after about 10m but I kept with him for about 60m before he ran across one of our more major roads and I rationally decided I was not going to chase anyone into traffic.
But, getting back to the discussion, he broke, I chased. There was no thought process involved until about 10m later. Personally I put it down to having spend massive parts of my life playing full contact team sport where you learn to react to the movements around you or never get given field time.
The other possibility I made after discussing this with a friend is that maybe I am naturally a predator and my chase response is hard wired.
(one thing that isn’t hard wired is my fitness – I nearly coughed up a lung chasing that little prick! 😛 )
Same thing here but I ended up chasing two kids with guns who had shot up our chickens. It was night, just gone to bed and heard them. Jumped out a window and chased them for about 100 feet until it dawned on me that I was in my skivvies and they were armed. So stopped and yelled at them, returned home and called their mother who said it could not possibly be them. Asked where they were now. “Out hunting”.
The kids did not turn out well.
and a wise one, better to spook and be wrong than not react and get got.
ie stick/snake
im raising chickens after the fox killed my entire flock 3 weeks ago,
luckily I had room temp stored fertile eggs I could incubate
the chicks hatched saturday;-)
11 who now see me as mummachook and rely on me to teach them whats good whats not and how to respond.
theyre being dog accepting , as they see them(being inside chicks right now)
thats possibly going to be an isue as they grow and go outside as the damned dogs tend to chase chooks. the old crew knew dogs were danger! and to hide or fly up a tree when out roaming, this lot wont have that fear;-/
Trot seems to be difficulty, if you look at trotting races, often horses start to gallop and and are disqualified.
Seems to be not the usual way to move.
They break stride because they want to go faster, not because the trot is difficult. Most breeds trot and cannot do the running walk the Walkers do. Some breeds, called gaited, can do both gaits.
This sentance part “Tennessee Walking Houses cannot trot” created a funny image in my brain. Typing error i know. But talking about horses , there are two breeds of horses ( Icelandic and Mongolian ) that i know of that have 5 types of gaits instead of the common 4 , and in both cases it seems to be something of a born with or inherited trait as the foals seem to the know how to do the “tölt”-gait from the day day the are able to stand on all four feet.
Below is a link to the to a short youtube clip showing those iclandic five gait-types of the iclandic horses
weird
gallops a canter and the tolt n flying are just pacing
note the rider didnt rise to the trot
must have a cast iron bum
Perhaps he’s a robot.
My favorite is fish have X mins of memory….
….so every fish in the ocean is lost
But they don’t remember they’re lost.
Yet they remember that when I walk into the room and up to the tank, it might be feeding time, so they come to the surface.
X mins of memory is rubbish. They just don’t care.
LOL! Tell that to the salmon
“Cow” circles are celebrated by auerochs, if I remeber well some pitures in earlier days.
buy a “too”
😀
Done.
It’s common in many related species, to include musk oxen, not just the cows, but bulls as well.
Many years ago, I read Richard Dawkins’ book The Extended Phenotype, which dealt with these issues. He considered the structure of the beaver’s dam or bird’s nest, for instance, as every bit as much part of the creature’s phenotype as its hemoglobin makeup.
It seems that your blog is not searchable, so I don’t know if you have made reference to this work or not.
Looking over my bookshelves now, I don’t see the book. So it appears to be one of those that I liked so much that I gave it to a friend to read. (Does anyone else suffer from the phenomenon of giving away your favorite books, so your own shelves only have mediocre books?)
Ed Bo posted: “It seems that your blog is not searchable, . . .”
Well, Ed, please look at the top far right alongside any WUWT article posting and you’ll find a search box immediately underneath the title “NEW! Improved search capability”.
He means the blog where all my articles are. It is a simple blogspot blog. I have no computer skills.
I have not read Dawkins but surely it is generally accepted that instincts like nest building are genetic. Or perhaps I do not understand the point of the reference.
My proposal is to describe these instincts in cognitive detail — concepts, perceptions, knowledge and decisions. In AI this is called knowledge engineering.
Gordon: I was referring to David’s own blog horsecogntion — the subject of this post. Can you find a search feature there?
Ed, my apologies for my misunderstanding.
Something to try, lacking a built-in search feature, would be to hit he “F” key while holding down the “CRTL” key.
A window should pop up where you can enter your search word.
It won’t search the entire site but it will search the part of it you have open.
(Maybe you already knew that.)
The Cat and the fish is hilarious. Had a Mainecoon that was too smart for his own good.
His favorite cat toy was a Dog brain. He’d open doors ,pullout pet food bags with his teeth,
and the only thing that he couldn’t out smart were blue jays..
Yellow cat hair in the nest and all that..
I once saw a little brown bunny-rabbit siting in the middle of my bright green front lawn. It was completely covering a small brown patch of soil, where a removed tree stump still prevented new grass from growing.
At first I thought that it was foolish of this rabbit to completely cover the only bit of ground where it would be camouflaged. Then it occurred to me that any local predatory bird has likely experienced this little brown patch before.
I will never underestimate instinct again.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Vuk
“Animals live complex lives that we do not understand.”
True. It might be added that we barely understand human behavior. Since we’re in a psychological philosophical mood today, I’ll offer two Carl Jung quotations and a link (6 pages):
“In each of us there is an ʘther whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves…” —Psychological Reflections
“…The question arises: ‘Has the Unconscious consciousness of its own?’” —ETH Lectures, Pages 212-213
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331047505_The_Guardienne_Autonomous_Semi-sentient_Protective_Region_of_the_Human_Brain
Very true. How language works is still a mystery. How can a sound refer to a city?
A sound can not refer to a city, and never does of itself. A particular sound can however become generally accepted to refer to a city, but only by those who have previously heard that sound used in reference to that specific city. Where the same city/town names exist in different countries, people from those countries will accept the sound as being a reference to their own city. Does the Sound of “Washington” refer to the State, City or person? Assuming that your sound means the same as another’s use of the same sound leads to message misinterpretation .
Few know that the Stonehenge monoliths were actually erected to memorialize the protective circles formed by cows when threatened, which the Druids observed all too often in their day.
It was much later in time that some of the Stonehenge stones were found to be coincidentally situated with certain astrological/astronomical alignments.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
P.S. Be very thankful that humor still exists to this day.
When noticing these astrological alignments, do they account for polar procession?
The Druids were reportedly very smart. Related to polar precession, which particular alignments are you referring to?
Is it the particular one on stone #6 that relates to determining the ascending node of the vernal equinox, or is it the offset of -3.25 degrees in the orbital eccentricity drift-adjusted obliquity of the ecliptic measured off of stone #1, or just the +22.71 degrees offset in the argument of perihelion as derived from stones #4 and #7 taken together?
Also, please be aware that the signs and constellations defining today’s astrological zodiac have changed since the time of the Druids and construction of Stonehenge, somewhat independently of polar precession.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Druids are no longer around. None ever returned from their polar procession.
Tom. I get your point . . . subtle as it may be.
+42
yup, you just shift all the stones to the left..
“. . . to the left.”
Ummmm . . . would that be when looking north or looking south . . . or looking east, or looking west?
Its Rose Tinted stuff like this, removed from the real world while professing to have studied/understand it (e.g. The scientific insanity that is the GHGE)that will get ourselves extincted.
By our own hand
I’m sure you’ve a pithy trollism for peeps who appeal to their own authority as I’m about to but tough.
It might just save your life.
I kept cows. With their own babies. As nautural as natural could be.
Because here in the UK are things called ‘Footpaths’. Enshrined in English Law as devices allowing anybody at any time to go wandering about over somebody else’s property.
Just try that with your neighbours.
No matter, plenty self righteous folks take it upon themselves to do exactly that, trample someone else’s property and often in the company of their pet dog
The cows DO NOT form a circle with the calves inside.
Just for a taster you wanna see what they do to a wild rabbit infected with Mixymatosis. i.e. Blind
The cows mash the attacker/intruder into the ground. even just a blind little bunny rabbit
They do that to human ‘intruders’ also
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-49775279
Just one of many incidents that happen regularly – prompted by guff as we read here?
And I know about Belties, my neighbours kept them. They’re the short haired version of the Aberdeen Angus I kept and *normally* the most docile lumps of beef you’ll *ever* come upon.
Equally as docile as the herculean Charolais.
On the subject of Inherited Animal Knowledge- why do baby human animals universally *hate* eating vegetables?
Are they trying to tell us something?
Such as: Mummy daddy I don’t wanna eat that foul tasting nutrient-free 5h1T and die an early death from obesity cancer diabetes autoimmune disease and/or Covid?
But Mummy Daddy know better and that veggies are *healthy* someone who has studied the subject for years *and* wrote dozens of articles told them so…..
Wake up people and show Ma Nature some respect – *not* Fake Awe & Wonderment typified by that old fool Attenborough
In my experience with cows, they mostly try to trample intruders when they get upset, hard to tell if a circular formation is involved?
One behavior that is quite universal and persistent is that when most of the cow moms are grazing away from their own calves, the calves will be in a small locality with at least one or two cows always nearby, babysitting.
Sorry but I saw the cow circle myself. I am a farmer. As for the rest, I happily have no idea what you are talking about.
When the dog runs behind you for safety , the cows encircle. If there are calves within mooing distance , you’re in real big trouble.
We could consider a thermo-taxi as an alternative explanation . . . the calves were just keeping warm in the middle of all the heating elements.
“As for the rest, I happily have no idea what you are talking about.”
That’s pretty typical for Peta. Welcome to the club.
Maybe they only form circles when they’re in the right mooed.
You deserve a grin for that one!!
Thank you, John. I’ll be here all week.
My own experience, on the family farm in years past, was in
somewhat hilly terrain where protective circles might not be easy to organize in any case. However, when those cows start stomping on an unfortunate adversary, it starts looking like an inward looking circle, or trap of sorts. Incidentally, I never saw a coyote get into that sort of trouble, stealthy lot, coyotes..
“When I sit on the mower it runs out and hides under my truck. This baby knows when to hide, where to hide and how to hide. It also knows when to change hiding places. These are complex behaviors.”
Yes and a bird is a very complex organism with a sizeable brain.
I repeatedly observe similar behaviour when I walk in to my bathroom at night and turn on the light.
Invariably, a few individuals from the silverfish infestation I am battling. They seem to be mostly night creatures and emerge from nooks and crannies in the dark. When the light turns on the response is to ‘freeze in place and wait’. This lasts maybe 10 seconds and then dark seeking behaviour starts up. If the bug detects any sort of visiual cue ( implying movement of a threat) they go into high gear and scurry FAST. They also have an uncanny ability to randomly change direction when you are trying to swat them flat.
“Yes and a bird is a very complex organism with a sizeable brain.”
The bird brain packs a lot more neurons into a small space that does the human brain. This probably applies to a lot of smaller animals. Animals may not be as dumb as some people think.
I know that dogs can learn from each other, and they have a lot of the same emotions that people have.
I had a dog who was almost blind and he would feed by first walking up to the feed bowl and then he would feel around with his nose, all around the outside of the bowl and then all around the inside, and then he would get himself a big mouthful and walk off and lay down and eat.
I had an older dog at the time I got this dog and within a few months of getting the blind dog, my older female dog started doing the same thing at the feed bowl as the blind dog. I guess she thought that might be beneficial to her. She stopped doing it after a while.
I had a pitbull dog once and I had a six-foot tall chainlink fence all the way around my house, so the dog could run free without causing problems to anyone else. Well, this dog had learned how to push underneath a chainlink fence and would get out. Imagine the strength it would take to force the bottom of a chainlink fence out far enough for you to get on the other side.
Anyway, I ended up putting an electric wire along the bottom of the inside of the fence which would shock the dog if he touched it. So he touched it and yelped and got a taste of it. The next day I was out in the yard with him and I was looking at his face and he walked up to that electric wire, and apparently he had forgotten it was there, and when he saw it, his eyes went wide, just like a startled human would do, and he backed away from the wire. After that, I quit putting an electrical charge through the wire because he had learned his lesson and wouldn’t go near it.
Dogs are wonderful people. I’m not surprised that humans and dogs are companions.
Well, dogs have evolved for thousands of years to be suitable companions for people. It’s part of their evolutionary adaptation. I’m not sure who got the best of the deal, but pooches are now part of the human race.
so stick a bugbomb in there just after lights out
to catch even more put shredded paper slightly damp in there for a few nights before to encourage them all out for a feed
no more bugs
I’ve often thought that some social philosophies don’t pay attention to heridity. They often propose actions that result in failure and death because it conflicts with survival.
“Let’s have some peace around here.” The DNA of those who choose not to survive an attack don’t reproduce. And there will always be attackers. “Peace, peace; when there is no peace.”
The some for those who practice the “one child” philosophy.
Poorly stated I know, but DNA rewards the survivors.
OK S: There’s always the likelihood that those people who don’t want to fight, but just hide, or run away, are more likely to survive, while those who take on the attackers get killed. The latter fighters sacrifice themselves so the former scaredy-cats survive and reproduce. In a violence prone species, retaining genes for both behaviours is the safest strategy.
i once lived in a Tennessee Walking House. It was very scenic and educational. The only problem was my address kept changing and the Post Office tired of forwarding my mail.
Who knew that mobile homes were invented in Tennessee!
If they were “running” houses, maybe there’d be less tornado damage!
(“Fun with Typos” 101 😎
Readers intrigued by David Wojick’s post and articles will likely like this book (I do):
Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge —
Radnitzky & Bartley, editors, 1987.
By what mechanism does a synaptic modification to the brain (learning) modify DNA in an existing egg, sperm, or embryo in order to pass on learning as an instinct?
Jeff, just google “epigenetic modification” and read to your heart’s content.
‘Expert knowledge’ is really the wrong words for instinctive behaviour. Analysis of such behaviours show that the animal responds to proximal cues, so that the complete behaviour could be viewed as a series of responses to the cues as they evolve. For example, the beaver responds to running water by inserting sticks in it, and keeps doing this as the water rises until the dam is complete. Lake beavers do not experience flowing water and dig dens in the bank.
For cows to form a circle, the only requirement would be for each cow to prefer to be flank to flank with another when threatened. In response to threat bellows, calves come close to the dam’s flank, and the movement of the cows would push them into the centre of the circle.
Yes many behaviours are complex, but they can be decomposed into bits of stimulus and response. What an animal inherits is the tendency to respond in a particular way under a complex set of conditions which include its physiological state. This is different from what humans can do such as complete a complex task they have no experience of on the basis of verbal instructions. Thing go exceedingly wrong when a human simply follows his/her instincts. For example, men who react with aggression when their ‘possession’ of a mate is threatened.
“Yes many behaviours are complex, but they can be decomposed into bits of stimulus and response.”
How would you explain the rabbit that chooses to sit on a tiny patch of brown dirt in the middle of a bright green lawn? I still marvel at how this choice was made without reasoning. I used to think that animal camouflage was a passive affair. This rabbit seemed to make an active decision, somehow knowing that sitting on the little patch of brown on a green lawn would make her invisible to birds.
The bare soil was a warm patch.
Cows always seek the warmest , driest ground to camp on.
I usually have anywhere from a dozen to two dozen new rabbits appearing around where I live every spring and by this time of year they are all gone, picked off by Hawks. I saw one rabbit yesterday just as it was getting too dark to see, and it ran away fast, and that’s the only one I’ve seen in weeks.
Watching all the rabbits disappear over the season makes me think sometimes that there might not be any more left, but there is always a new batch in the spring. The way of the world.
That sounds just like the action of RHD virus – just a few immune rabbits left each season.
It’s not a disease. It’s the hawks and the owls that get them.
I have a relative that lives next door to me, about 100 yards away, and the rabbits I’m talking about populate the gravel road between the two houses. They seem to like the mowed grass. And as I said, there will be anywhere from a dozen to two dozen of them sitting along the road. I can almost walk up to them. They’ll move away if I get too close, but they don’t run off and hide. They are not afraid of me, up to a point.
Last year I had about two dozen of the critters hanging around and in just about one 24-hour period, they were all gone. Something came along and hit a bonanza. It’s curious that they seem to wait until the rabbits are mature before getting them.
I have lots of hawks and owls around here along with coyotes and bobcats. But I’m pretty sure the hawks are the ones getting the rabbits. I have one hawk that just sits on my fence sometimes. I run him off when I see him. It doesn’t really help the rabbits, but it makes me feel better. 🙂
There have to be lots of new rabbits to feed the hawks. There have to be lots of hawks to pick off the excess rabbits so rabbits don’t overrun the world. The latter happened in Australia where rabbits were added to into an environment without predators (and competitors) who had evolved along with them.
“This rabbit seemed to make an active decision, somehow knowing that sitting on the little patch of brown on a green lawn would make her invisible to birds.”
Oh I see now…. Like my cat that somehow knows my wife’s knitting pile will make it invisible to her.
Or the rabbit’s ass feels better on the scruffy brown patch.
A lot of what critters do is determined by their physical bodies. There is the concept of embodied cognition.
Mark Tilden used to work at the University of Waterloo but not as a professor. The problem was that his robots were far more capable and interesting than those created by the faculty. Needless to say, he ended up elsewhere (JPL if I recall correctly).
Mark liked to build simple robots using salvaged parts from calculators, greeting cards, and cell phones. Some of them accurately mimicked insect behavior. Because they had the right physical layout they needed only rudimentary processing, ie. the chip from a singing greeting card.
If you look at animal behavior in the same way you look at imperative computing, it looks very complex. If you consider physicality and look at it in terms of pattern recognition, it looks much simpler.
The bottom line is that critters, including humans, aren’t logic processors. If anything, the underlying processing is pattern recognition. It’s way more computationally efficient and way more likely to result from evolution.
How much of human behaviour is also genetically inherited? Remember that old saying about an apple nor falling far from the tree? There is perhaps more truth to that than we thought. Besides having ears similar to my father’s, what else about my behaviour came from my father via my genes?
We do a whole bunch based on our biology. The term, ‘Thinking with his gonads’, comes immediately to mind. What separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to make up complex excuses for why we did those things.
I never got to know my grandparents on dad’s side of the family. Grandpa died ~7 years before I was born and grandma passed when I was 3 months old. Here’s the interesting part for me. Grandpa was a quaker, grandma a catholic, dad and his brothers were raised non religious because their parents did not want to force their religious views on their kids. Years later I’m taking an online test to determine what religion you are (I consider myself agnostic) and started laughing as soon as I saw the results. What am I according to that test? a neo Quaker, something I had never heard of up until that point. Genetics, learned behavior or a bit of both? I don’t know.
Is the author suggesting that learned behavior can be passed on genetically? If so, it suggests Lysenkoism. In any case, there would seem to be little evidence for this in humans;)
Tom, you need to get up to speed. There is a legit form of’Lysenkoism’. Its technical name is epigenetics. I wrote about it over at Judith’s Some years ago, using mesoamerican beans (Pulses) as the epigenetic plant example. All 11 dry mesoamerican pulse ‘beans’ (pinto, navy, black, kidney, red, …) are the same wild type plant genome, just different epigenetic phenotypes.
With my horseback riding activities suspended for the foreseeable future, I’ve taken to reading up on the theory of equitation and equine behavior in general. The blog link may provide me with much more reading material. 😉 I started reading a sample of a book titled “Equitation Science” by Paul McGreevy. It is more of a textbook and, alas, a rather pricey one. The book discusses how horses think and learn, and how to train and handle based on those factors. The author covers ethology, which seems to match your field of interest.
I’m a little conflicted by the general theme here. As a bighorn sheep hunting guide (as a sport, not my usual job) I pre-scouted to find the real trophy rams, mapped their normal routines, then bumped them a little (put my weak scent on them) and watched where they went to feel safe, I can testify that the bigger, trophy rams displayed more behavior that would seem “intelligent” than the regular rams. However, when the client showed up we moved in on these guys and they never adjusted their behavior even if they detected us first. Their behavior was more survival-adaptive than intelligent, and this seems to me to be similar to humans of higher intelligence having more fun than the average.
It seems to me that this is distinction without a difference.
It is all a result of evolution.
It runs in the family (Bovidae). This from GOOGLE:
Arctic wolves, polar bears, and brown bears may predate on musk ox. When threatened by potential predators, musk oxen will form a formidable circle around their young with their horns pointing outwards for protection. Musk ox may charge to scare away the predator.
Human “Fight or Flight”. Learned or instinct? Instinct in my book.