Trivia

Question 1

Describe the most basic organisms that appear to sleep.

Answer 1

Bacteria have active and passive phases that correspond to planetary cycle of light/dark.

Question 2

Interesting things about year 536?

Answer 2

Sun obscured leading to coldest decade in history ergo massive crop failures/shortages and starvation globally (world pop = a few hundred million)
- 7 of 8 chinese farmers died in 540s
- massive civilization strife and collapse eg 75% of scandinavian settlements abandoned
Plague
- justinian (541): 10s of millions died in europe

Question 3

Unique qualities of raven pecking order/dominance

Answer 3

• Dominance vocalizations identify gender (non-alphas effectively genderless and do not mate while alphas are around)
• Alpha large body size (males have 30x testosterone of non-alphas) very metabolically costly/firsf to starve
• Access to food egalitarian despite high stratification (alpha perches on top which is worst position to feed from)
• Bathing is vivid context of pecking order (alpha will repeatedly bathe just to prevent others even though energetically costly and serves no purpose)

Question 4

Social life of ravens

Answer 4

• Pair bonded but show strong “friendship” behaviors incl mutualism wrt food signaling and individual recognition/relationships
• pair bonding can ignore relative starus (alpha mald w beta female)
• Roosting groups can be quite large (but only one pair breeds)

Question 5

How do ravens seem to identify their eggs?

Answer 5

Accept any egg that looks similar to the first one they lay

Question 6

Deveipmental stages of ravens

Answer 6

• Young highly curious (test almost anything for food) and learn a lot from parental guidance
• juvenlines inherently fearful of anything they didnt safely encounter when young (particularily soft and furry) even “clear” food sources like roadkill and piles of things they recognize as desireable food when in “pieces” (like spaghetti and cheese puffs)

Question 7

What do ravens fear

Answer 7

Things they dont understand/can’t explain

Question 8

Relationship between wolves and ravens

Answer 8

Ravens strongly prefer feeding on carcasses in the presence of wolves (but avoid good food that aren’t near them)
- ravens follow wolves and seem dependent on them to kill and open carcasses

Question 9

Relationship between humans and ravens

Answer 9

• ravens follow hunters
• traditional inuit hunters call to ravens and look for wingtipping (unique raven behavior of tumbling in sky while making gong like attractant call above food as signal to others) to indetify prey location