I’m curious if this is nurtured behavior or behavior devolped through an evolutionary process, or both. This reminds me of the fox domestication experiment in Siberia in the 40’s. Researchers bred foxes, kept all the ones that didn’t show as many signs of being afraid of humans, then subsequently bred those ones again (the rest were turned into furs to fund the research.) This process is kind of like that, but in reverse. Will say that these don’t seem to be truly domesticated bettongs, so not quite the same, but still interested.
It looks like it was a short-term experiment (way shorter than the lifespan of a single individual). The actual paper indicates the "bootcamp" lasted 18 months. And they had a control with two pens, only one exposed to the predators.
similar to that foxes experiment, i think instead of just teaching bettongs to fear they should have just selectively bred those bettongs who is naturally most fearful. Giving the short lifespan and that such selective breeding would take only a few generations, in several years they would have a population of bettongs genetically wired to fear the predators and thus much better fit for survival in the current conditions.
Seems like pointless temporary exercise not even based in science. Even if you "teach" the current batch of rodents to be afraid of cats, how will their offspring be afraid of cats if they aren't naturally inclined to be fearful of predators?
The way prey behavior is developed in nature is through evolution. In a batch of animals, there are mutations that cause a small portion of them to be naturally antsy, cautious and afraid. You could see this in litter of puppies. There are some who are very friendly, some that are neutral and some who stand back and are cautious. Same with rats and other rodents. When predators get introduced, the "friendly" ones get killed and the more cautious rodents get to breed, producing more and more cautious rodents over time. It's basic evolution. Of course with the introduction of human supported "super-predators" like cats doesn't give species time to "evolve".
Isn't the simple and obvious solution here is to remove feral cats and other non-native predators? Or are feel-good but ineffective "predator boot camps" where preservation is at right now?
In species where adults raise their young, the young are typically hanging around with the parent for a while between when they're able to walk/fly on their own and when they reach full maturity.
The parent sees/smells a predator and flees/hides; the young flee/hide with it. They learn that the response to the stimulus associated with the predator is to flee/hide.
A genetic predisposition towards being afraid of predators. The assumption is that if you have 100 mice, and 50 of them show signs of being afraid of cats, then you breed those mice to produce another 100, noting the pairs that produced them. You can then see how many of the offspring are afraid of cats, and select that group to produce the next generation.
Some of the fear of cats will be learned behavior, some of it will be instinct. It could also be that the ability to learn the behavior has genetic links (think naturally smart mice). If you keep this cycle going, eventually you have a group that should be higher than your initial 50% fear rate. It's possible that you can't selectively breed for this, but it's also possible that you can. This is in some ways the inverse of how humans domesticated many different species.
You're correct, this was only done with a couple generations of animals. Unlikely to have been enough for cultivated development of the behavior genetically. This seems to be more of a "let's just traumatize the animals and hope they change their behavior as a result".
Why isn't this based on science? These are people who work in animal behavior. If you traumatize an animal (including humans) it can change that creature's behavior, and affect their behavior in child rearing. Like you said, the creatures don't have time to evolve these traits to a genetic predisposition because of how quickly the predators were introduced.
>>Isn't the simple and obvious solution here is to remove feral cats and other non-native predators?
Obvious: yes.
Simple: Have you heard of the phrase "herding cats"? No, eliminating invasive species is never easy, that's why they're problematic.
It's far simpler than having to teach all the prey animals ( from rodents, to birds, to snakes, to reptiles, etc ) to learn a behavior.
It's not like we don't have experience wiping out animals before. The only reason it isn't done is because the naive minded will cry about the poor cats.
So it is being done, however, to truly remove cats, it needs to be done in an fenced off areas(or islands). Fence maintenance is ongoing and expensive, plus Australia is a big place:
While the AWC approach is effective, it will take decades and huge investment to scale out across the continent.
If small scale experiments like the article describes show promise, it might provide cheaper and faster methods for mitigation (not elimination) of the impact of feral animal predation on native marsupial populations. Hopefully enough to keep the marsupial populations viable in more areas.
Sometimes fencing an eradication are not effective tools for feral animal removal.
Eradication and containment efforts for preventing the spread of cane toads (another introduced species gone feral in Australia) have proven ineffective despite significant investment and effort. This is largely due to cane toads being able to move great distances during the wet season when large areas of northern Australia are flooded and their ability to breed in great numbers.
Research into training quolls to avoid eating cane toads by feeding them cane toad sausages with small amounts of a nausea inducing agent have show promise. Enough to make them unwell, but not kill them.
I have done off-track hikes through the Kimberley region in Western Australia over the past few years. Cane toads reached the Manning River (central Kimberley) a couple of years ago. On this years hike there was a noticeable decrease in the numbers of native animals (fresh water crocodiles, snakes, long-necked turtles, goannas, fish etc - we don't tend to see many marsupials as they tend to be noturnal) in the Manning River region.
As eradication and containment are ineffective tools for cane toad management, I'd say any research into alternative programs for improving long term native animal survival against feral predation/impact is a good idea.
