#animals behavior

Here's the issue(s): I'm not sure I want to stick with purely aquatic species as a career path. I adore and am fascinated by fish, mainly freshwater species, but I also have a passion for large mammals, especially carnivores, and animal behavior. I have always wanted to study wild dogs and big cats.

Why city birds are more aggressive than country birds

by Claire Asher

City folk have a reputation for being less friendly than their rural counterparts, and the same appears to be true for garden birds. Urban song sparrows (Melospiza melodia, pictured) are more aggressive toward their neighbors than are sparrows out in the country, researchers report this month in Behavioral Ecology.

But whereras the temperament of human city-dwellers is often attributed to the sheer density of people, this isn’t the case for sparrows. The team measured birds’ responses to recordings of another male’s song, noting how often males approached or attacked the speakers, and found that aggression depended not on the density of sparrows, but on the availability of food in the environment...

(read more: Science News/AAAS)