Posted by:
FR
at Tue Feb 17 09:48:17 2009 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by FR ]
Look at your post, its about your restrictions, we cannot do this become of time, and money, etc etc etc. Those restrictions have nothing to do with snake behavior. They are human restrictions.
In our case, we can do longterm studies, because we are truly interested in the animals and do this on OUR OWN DIME. Do yes, decades of information surpasses, a couple of months of funded study, that must be done in a hurry. And over time, we learned that these animals have many stradgies that are utilized for different conditions. Which means you extrapolating what one individual does in a limited amount of time, is useless for understanding behavior. A question for you sir, whats more important biologically, what behavior is utilized in good times(normal) or what behavior is utilized during stressful times? answer please. Ok, i will answer for you, its far more important to understand how they overcome stressful times, as that is how they prevent extinstion. Which is a big reason we study them, is it not?
Radio tagging is useless. You learn very little, but you learn it quickly. Bio 1 teachs of a basic behavior, fight or flight. You breach an animals natural behavior and they take flight. That is so easily proven, its laughable. But because you believe in your methods, your blind to ethology. You simply cannot take a snake out of its enviornment, do surgery, install a radio, with an antenna sticking out(in some cases) and return said animal back to where you found it and think its going to resume what it was doing. Sir, that type of thinking is naive and narsisistic(all about humans).
You see, I have worked with many methods and actually compared them to eachother. Non interference, NOT TOUCHING THEM, does not interfere or change their behavior. Pit tagging without removing them from spot of original contact, causes 65% to take flight. Radio tagging, causes them to take flight, Period. and why would it not? What radio tagging does is effectively turning a resident animal into a transient animal. But you do not even recognize that do you??????
I have nothing agains radio tagging, AS LONG AS YOU LABEL the information, data obtained with a radio physically installed in a small animal. Then followed by the thing that installed it. That data is not the same as what the animal would have done if it was not collected and had surgery done.
What is science to me. Its all about asking questions and recieving results. In this case, SCIENCE demands that you consider what removing an animal from its enviornment and installing a radio, ACTUALLY DOES, to the animals, not to your time limits and budjet. From conversations with you, you deny behavior, your not sensitive to ethology. Your a mechanic. Which is fine, so why do you talk about behavior when you deny they have any????? Go back to your training, be a biologist and stop screwing with behavior.
In the end Jeff, what good has your radio tagged information ACTUALLY DONE? Did you learn anything? Did you find important information? Did you repeatedly find reproductive events? Did you repeatedly find social events? Did you see all the basic life events these animals MUST DO. Did you find information that you can repeat in the lab?????? No offense sir, what is science to YOU. Cheers
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RE: What is Biology to you Frank? - FR, Tue Feb 17 09:48:17 2009