“It was quite funny to see,” said Edwin van Leeuwen of the University of Antwerp, who studies animal culture. They shivered through their whole bodies.”Dr. van Leeuwen tried it himself and understood why. “It’s not a pleasant feeling, poking a piece of grass far enough into the ear to stay there,” he said. The behavior is just one of many surprising examples of animal culture that researchers have lately divulged, as a vivid summary makes clear in a recent issue of Science. Culture was once considered the patented property of human beings: We have the art, science, music and online shopping; animals have the instinct, imprinting and hard-wired responses.

Source: New York Times May 07, 2021 09:00 UTC