Ha! I knew it. The quiet animals get more play than the loud obnoxious ones:
During bison mating season, the quietest bulls score the most mates and sire the most offspring while studs with the loudest bellows see the least action, according to a surprising new study by researchers at University of California, Davis, and Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. The researchers also found that the volume of a bull's bellow was not related to its weight or age.
"We were expecting to find that the bigger, stronger guys -- the high-quality males -- would have the loudest bellows, because they can handle the costs of it," said Megan Wyman, a graduate student in geography at UC Davis and the lead author of the study. "But instead, we found the opposite. My collaborator in San Diego wanted me to call the paper 'Speak softly and carry a big stick.'"
The study is the first to examine how the amplitude, or loudness, of a mammal's vocalizations correlate with reproductive success. It was published in the November issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.
I am looking at all of you jackasses who have been talking behind me in movie theaters over the last couple months. Take a lesson from the noble bison: if you want to get lucky, shut the hell up.
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Why do you suppose the behavior of loud bellowing has not been selected out?
Those loudmouth bisons? They are just whining the loudest, about how they are not getting any although they are such NiceGuysTM.
Could be they take turns.
Unless they'd hidden microphones the noisy bison were probably yelling "two legs are back!" --
Had they tagged the bison and watched for a long time? Are they describing individual personalities, longterm behavior, or just how the bison happened to be acting during some observing interval?
Heck, maybe some of them were just preoccupied or it's not polite to bellow when courting. Some researchers could learn from this.
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I recall a story that supposely happened back in the 1950s that the rangers at Wind Cave National Park told tourists about a quiet bison.
It's an open park, the fence is around the perimeter and another around the little visitor center area; the rest is mostly grassland. Lots of bison.
Lots of signs warning people not to disturb the bison.
Rangers got a report of an unattended vehicle at a pullout. Found it, door open, camera bag on the front seat.
Started looking around (tallgrass prairie).
Found a guy rather badbly trompled up far out in the prairie with a somewhat stomped camera.
Took him out on a stretcher. Developed the film to see if it had any clues.
First picture -- through the windshield, sleeping bison far out on prairie.
Next picture, a little closer.
Next picture, quite close. Still sleeping.
Next few pictures were closeups of the sleeping bison from all angles.
Next -- and last -- picture shows a foot going out to nudge the bison in the ribs, presumably to wake it up to get a better camera angle.
OK, it's hearsay. But it's cautionary.
Makes perfect sense to me. I've always preferred the quiet guys myself. =^..^=