#(( but yeah another big pet peeve i have is just. not realizing that predators also fear their prey.

[royalreef]

@fstbmp​ inquired: I don't have anything in particular to ask but what's your Least favorite thing to see when sb writes Animals :tm: ?

(( Just because it’s been on my mind lately: treating animals as automatons.

I’ve seen this SO MUCH — where an animal is given A Stimulus and thus has to react in a given Response. You see this most with predators. They spot a prey animal, or see a threat, or there’s blood in the water, or WHATEVER, and they will immediately drop everything else that they’re doing to go chase something or kill something or what have you. They’ll also be loud and noisy and roar, even when hunting something, or when they burst out from an ambush, because the element of surprise is clearly not a factor here. I also like to call this “making animals stupid” because... it really does!

Predators, for instance, actually have a lot of factors that they weigh out when considering going after a prey item. The terrain, the weather, the season, the current availability of prey, the predator’s own bodily state, light vs dark, open vs cover, their own hunger and need, the species of prey, the predator’s memory, and so on and so forth. A predator knows when it’s hungry and when it’s not. A predator also knows if prey is rarer at a given time, or how much energy it’ll cost to kill and eat that prey item. There’s also the aspect of the age and health of the prey as well, because the reason that predators target the sick and the young and the old is not just because they’re easier, but because they can’t fight back as well. A lot of predators actually die to their prey, and a predator also knows that if a prey item injures them, then this likely means starvation and a slow death regardless. An injured predator can’t hunt, and there are no antibiotics in the wild.

It also entirely disregards an aspect of animals that is entirely glossed over in virtually all media: communication between different species.

This isn’t referring to specifically “talking” to another animal, but in the fact that animals are pretty good at loosely knowing what body language means. They can tell if another animal is behaving aggressively, or acting frightened, or if they’re hunting, or if they’re being calm. This is why so much advice on wild animals starts with “Don’t panic” — because you freaking out and flailing around also looks, to other animals, aggressive or defensive.

This is why you can see lions at watering holes calmly drinking beside their prey species — because they can tell that the lions aren’t hunting. This is also where you see the Clever Hans effect, because animals can tell when another animal is excited about something, and even moreso if you reward them for it.

And all of this is entirely disregarded in most media. A predator that’s fighting another predator will disregard the other completely to go chase after some humans. An animal will abandon its kill to chase after the smaller humans. An animal that is entirely relaxed and at a distance away from everyone else will quickly approach when it spots a human.

I think the most egregious example of this is actually the line of advice for bear attacks that goes “If it’s black, fight back, if it’s brown, lie down” which fundamentally misunderstands how bears work. Not only is there the issue of, both these species of bear can have black or brown coloration, but there’s the issue of bears don’t attack for no reason. A much more effective method is knowing WHY the bear is attacking and how it’s acting. Does it expect food from you, and is thus begging and acting unusually calm and lenient around humans? Is it aggressive and territorial, perhaps with cubs in the area? Is it one of the rare cases where it’s actually hunting and stalking you? Have you just gotten too close up in it’s business and just need to give it some space? Did you approach it or did it approach you? These are not behaviors nor traits that are limited by species, and CRUCIALLY alter what you should do in any given situation.

Alternatively, I think media is GREAT when it subverts this expectation. I haven’t seen the movie in specific, but there is a scene in one of the newer Kong movies where a character tries to make a heroic sacrifice, by having live explosives on his person and expecting the monster to eat him, that is all for naught when the monster then smacks him away.

And, while I will crucially remind you that I haven’t seen the rest of the movie, that scene alone was a GENIUS moment for me. This animal probably knows what explosives do at this point! It probably knows it’s big and loud and dangerous! It can probably smell them on him! An animal can recognize when another animal, even a prey animal, has something “wrong” with it and can then reject it or even smack it further away from itself!

I just hate it when people think and write animals as being totally unable to reason or weigh their current options, and instead just react to whatever’s put in front of them, and alternatively think it can be really fun when media understands that animals aren’t stupid.