Animal behavior has been the subject of study and research for many years as scientists seek to better understand the behavioral diversity of species.
So researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland made a curious observation about animal studies.
This is because, in the test carried out by scientists with crows, the animals needed to explore a perforated trunk, and inside the holes there was hidden food.
If the bird did not react to trying to capture the food within 90 minutes, it would be disregarded from the research data set.
Thus, during analyses of the lives of crows, scholars noted that just one animal of the species is capable of hindering research on a group of the species.
In other words, even studying just one animal individually can put research on an entire group of that species at risk.
This is because, during studies, an individual animal may exhibit behavior that is different from the group of its species.
Christian Rutz, the study’s leader, found that they were only looking at subsets of New Caledonia’s resident crows, rather than studying the species as a whole.
Researcher warns: Some animal studies are biased
After noticing that some of the New Caledonian crows were approaching the log without any fear of the unusual object, the team decided to change the protocol.
The new idea involved leaving the log for an extra two days so that the crows that were hesitant to come near it could get used to the environment.
Then, other birds began to approach the trunk. For Rutz, this was the key moment, as they were able to witness that animals can also have particularities, just like humans, regardless of the behavior of their group in general.
Therefore, for Rutz, after this experiment, he considered that other research on other groups of animals may be wrong or biased.
His consideration is based on the point that studying only small segments of species can exclude some important information about animals, especially their behavior.
