Thread by @corvidresearch

It’s #SuperTuesday so let’s talk politics.

It’s a cutthroat world out where those in power try to keep it. Where alliances are formed, coalitions are built, and rivals are squashed.

It sounds harsh, but those are the realities when you’re a raven.

For animals that live in complex social worlds like ravens or primates, maintaining power can be key to accessing variety of important resources. While brute force is one way to do it, social strategies are an alternative way to gain or maintain power.

In fact, some people have argued that competition for power is a driving evolutionary force in the development of advanced cognition.

s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.d…

Although raven flock structure is plastic, there is a clear social structure where established breeding pairs are most dominant, followed by strongly bonded non-territory holders, loosely bonded non-territory holders, and finally lowest are non-bonded birds.

The most common way that ravens form bonds is by engaging in affilitative behavior like allopreening. If you watch ravens though, you’ll notice that these interactions occasionally get disrupted by a grumpy 3rd party. Why?

By observing the interaction of hundreds of marked wild ravens, a study by Massen et al. (2014) was able to show that these interruptions were not random, but appeared to be quite calculated, where the more strongly bonded birds were more likely to act as disrupters.

They also found that the kinds of bonding interactions most likely to be targeted were those between loosely bonded birds.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

What this suggests is that dominate ravens may be making a calculated decision to go after the relationships that meet at the intersection of “could become threatening” and “it’s not too late/dangerous to break em up”. Which is a great way to balance safety with scheming.

It’s not all negative though. A separate study by Fraser and Bugnyar (2010) showed that following aggressive interactions between ravens, uninvolved bystanders will engage in afflitative behaviors with victims, particularly if they have a relationship. journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

These behaviors likely serve to reduce the post-conflict distress of the victim, something that’s been shown in studies with primates to serve an important role in reducing the costs of conflicts within social groups.

So while we can’t help the political wars being waged, let’s take a cue from ravens and be there for each other to alleviate the inevitable stress of today, the run up to November, and just every damn day. Okay?