Chimpanzee and felid diet composition is influenced by prey brain size
Chimpanzee and felid diet composition is influenced by prey brain size
复制标题
黑猩猩和猫科动物的饮食成分受猎物大脑大小的影响
作者：
S. Shultz;R. Dunbar
猎物使用各种各样的反捕食者防御策略，包括形态和化学防御以及行为特征(风险调节的栖息地利用、活动模式的变化、觅食决定和群体生活)。对反捕食者策略有效性的关键测试是将它们与捕食者之间的相对死亡率指数联系起来。在这里，我们比较了捕食者的食物组成与猎物特征的偏差，并表明黑猩猩和猫科动物表现出最强烈和最一致的捕食者对小脑猎物的偏见。我们认为，大脑猎物在躲避捕食者方面可能更有效，因为它们可以有效地改变对特定捕食者遭遇的行为反应。因此，我们为这一假设提供了证据，即大脑大小的进化可能是由对更复杂和行为灵活的反捕食者策略的选择推动的。
Prey use a wide variety of anti-predator defence strategies, including morphological and chemical defences as well as behavioural traits (risk-modulated habitat use, changes in activity patterns, foraging decisions and group living). The critical test of how effective anti-predator strategies are is to relate them to relative indices of mortality across predators. Here, we compare biases in predator diet composition with prey characteristics and show that chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and felid show the strongest and the most consistent predator bias towards small-brained prey. We propose that large-brained prey are likely to be more effective at evading predators because they can effectively alter their behavioural responses to specific predator encounters. Thus, we provide evidence for the hypothesis that brain size evolution is potentially driven by selection for more sophisticated and behaviourally flexible anti-predator strategies.