Myths and Facts about Animal Behavior
One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone tells me they already know everything about a subject. It just simply isn’t true. While people may have an expertise in animal behavior, that doesn’t mean they know everything about it. It’s important to stay up-to-date on current research and practices and take everything you read with a grain of salt. With so many self-proclaimed experts out there, misinformation is rampant. Let me attempt to debunk 5 common myths about animal behavior. Please feel free to fact-check me, too!
Myth: An aggressive dog just needs to be shown who’s the alpha.
Fact: Aggression is often a form of fear in dogs. If you aren’t reading their body language and respecting their boundaries, dogs will feel the need to escalate into more aggressive behaviors to get you to back off. Using positive reinforcement techniques instead will help build trust and strengthen the relationship between trainer and animal. Fear-free handling is a growing practice in the veterinary profession and a study by Remier et. al. (2021) found that reading animal body language, using generous rewards, practicing considerate handling, and using medications to reduce stress and pain all help decrease the amount of fear and, consequently, aggression seen in the clinic. Continuing to use dominance training will only cause dogs to become more fearful and likely even more aggressive.
Fact: The term “alpha” was used to describe the social dynamics of wolf packs in early literature. However, Dr. David Mech (1999) later corrected himself and other researchers, noting that many of these observational studies were performed on un-related wolves held in captivity. He claimed, instead, that the more natural structure of the pack was that of a family unit: a breeding pair, the pups, and occasionally “adopted” young wolves that would usually split off to find their own mates later on. The only resemblance to a hierarchy were posturing behaviors labeled as “submissive” and “dominant.” Dominant postures were that of a wolf standing normally with a tail held horizontally or higher, and submissive postures were that of a wolf in a lowered position that would wag its tail, lower its ears, and lick up at the other wolf. Dominant postures can be explained as a normal, confident wolf, while submissive postures are explained as “food-begging” or appeasement behaviors. When wolves hunt, they often regurgitate food for the pups or the nursing female, giving the illusion of an alpha male eliciting submissive behaviors from the rest of the pack. In reality, wolves have more equal relationships, but with division of labor, and their packs are simply parents raising pups.
Myth: Tail wagging means an animal is happy.
Fact: Tail wagging can mean a number of things depending on the animal. In general, it means there is some level of excitement whether it be good or bad. In dogs, you will want to observe all of their body language and not just the wagging of the tail to determine what they are telling you. Ears back and the tail wagging low is that “submissive” posture we talked about earlier. This could be an appeasement response to de-escalate a conflict, or it could be a food-begging behavior. If the tail is held high and the animal has hard eyes, they are likely displaying an aggressive posture. In cats, a gentle swish of the tail tip with a relaxed posture is a calm cat. Short flicks or hard thumps of the tail can indicate agitation.
Tail wagging in other animals can also have less of an emotional purpose such as spreading scents from the anal glands, swatting away flies, and flagging threats.
Myth: You can’t train certain animals.
Fact: Any animal can be trained. Sometimes our perception of the animal’s environment is vastly different from their perception, so it can be difficult if you haven’t done your research. This idea of each animal’s unique perception is described as the term “umwelt,” by a German researcher named J. von Uexküll (1909). This was later put into the context of animal communication by Partan and Marler (2002). You need to know your animal’s natural history to recognize which behaviors are appropriate, what foods might be rewarding, how often the animal eats, which other reinforcers they might enjoy, and how they perceive their environment so you know which antecedents to use to elicit the behavior. In 2016, I got the opportunity to train a desert tortoise and learned just how fun training reptiles can be. In an invertebrates lab during my undergrad, we trained little flat worms under a microscope to test their handedness. Living is learning and every single animal is capable of it or they would not be around today.
Myth: An animal looks guilty because it knows what it did was wrong.
Fact: Going back to Dr. Mech (1999), the posturing we see as guilty is an appeasement behavior. Animals may not be able to connect the poop in the living room from 3 hours ago to you acting angrily toward them now. Animals are really good at reading body language because, just like us, that is an important form of communication. Even if you aren’t yelling at them, they can still tell when you are upset and they will adopt an appeasement posture to de-escalate the situation. In order to decrease a behavior, you need to catch the animal in the act and correct it immediately or they will not be able to make the connection between the behavior and the outcome.
Myth: A bad animal will always be a bad animal.
Fact: Labeling animals is always a treacherous road. Once you label an animal as “bad,” you are more likely to be biased as you try to work with them. You aren’t giving them a chance from the start. You should re-frame the way you think about it and talk about the behaviors you notice in functional terms. Instead of saying “my cat is aggressive,” you’ll want to say “my cat bit my child when he pet her belly, so now he is afraid to pet her.” In the ABC’s of training, this definition of the behavior includes the antecedent (the child pet the cat’s belly), the behavior (the cat bit the child), and the consequence (the child stopped petting the cat). Now, this is a problem we can actually fix instead of just the blanket “my cat is aggressive.” You can educate your child on the cat’s boundaries. Instead of the child going to the cat, let the cat come to the child and reward her every time she has a positive interaction with him.
Always make sure to do your research when you hear people make claims about animal behavior. When doing your research on the claims that you have heard, make sure you are looking up reputable, peer-reviewed sources. Down below, I have linked my resources for you to look at if you wish!
