Wildlife all around the world exhibits behaviours that appear to mimic how we as humans live. Species don’t even have to be especially intelligent to do things that echo our own lives. Here are some of the most extraordinary, and in some cases, weirder examples.
Animals that live like humans
Matabele ants
Being treated for our wounds is a recognisable attribute of human society and only human society – or is it? Maybe not. African matabele ants risk injuries such as the loss of a leg or two when they raid termite colonies, and you’d think the fallen heroes would just be left to die.
- Ants guide: what ant supercolonies are, how long ants live and just why they get stuck in a death spiral
- Here's what ants taught humans about managing a pandemic
But uninjured comrades will pick up those they deem likely to survive, and take them back to the nest. They even clean the wounds and treat them with substances that may fend off infections. Scientists have found no evidence that they award them medals, too, however, though perhaps it’s just a matter of time.
Florida carpenter ants
Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) live in Florida, southeast US, but just like Matabele ants they also tend to their injured comrades.
Instead of carrying injured individuals home and slathering them in antimicrobial saliva, these carpenter ants perform amputations. Frank noticed injured ants were willing participants in such procedures, actively presenting their injured legs to other ants that would then proceed to bite them off.
There’s a method to this procedure too. Those that injured their legs above the femur had their whole legs lopped off, while those with lower-leg injuries had their wounds groomed, likely in an effort to remove pathogens that could cause potentially fatal infections.
Orcas
Around the world, indigenous people hunt in many different ways, depending on their environment. A blow-pipe with poison-tipped darts works well in the rainforests of South America, but would be useless in the great expanses of the Kalahari Desert. And so the same is true of orcas or killer whales.
They adjust their hunting technique depending on what’s available. In Antarctica, they make waves to wash seals off ice floes, while in Patagonia, they grab seal pups off the beaches.
In the North Atlantic, they hunt herring by emitting calls at a particular frequency that herds them into tight baitballs. Once the fish are corralled in this way, the killer whales stun them with swishes of their powerful flukes.
Orangutans
Human offspring stay with their parents for the best part of two decades in many societies – even longer than that these days with sky-high rents and house prices – and this is mirrored by Sumatran orangutans, whose babies are dependent on their mothers (the ultimate single parents of the animal kingdom) for an average of nine years.
- Orangutan guide: species facts, diet and best places to see
- Researchers spent 455 days and nights watching orangutans sleep – what they observed was very human
Infant orangutans start building nests at three years old, but share a nest with their mother until they are seven, and are weaned at eight. Females can only reproduce again once the baby has left, but they make up for this by being fertile into their 40s. It’s a big investment, but at least they don’t have to pay university fees as well.
Elephants
Mourning and burying the dead would appear to be something that’s entirely the preserve of humans, but other species – especially elephants – also grieve for those that have passed on. Scientist Shifra Goldenberg witnessed the death of a matriarch called Queen Victoria in northern Kenya in 2013, and then over the following weeks, other members of the herd appeared to pay respect to her body.
- "It repeatedly swam away from and then back to the corpse, touching it and swimming in circles underneath it" – 7 animals that mourn the dead
- Elephant graveyards: is there any truth in the legend elephants go to a special place to die?
“Her family was distressed that she wasn’t getting up,” Goldenberg was quoted as saying. “But the larger population also was interested in her death.” Other scientists have also noted elephants’ fascination with death, though some say this cannot necessarily be interpreted as grieving. Female dolphins have been observed showing distress when one of their calves has died.
- “She carried her dead baby for 4 days" - do animals need to stare death in the face for closure?
- Do chimpanzees hold funerals? How chimps mourn their matriarch could provide lessons for human mental health
Cleaner wrasse
We all like a bit of TLC, a bit of pampering, right? That’s human nature. It’s also, as it turns out, fishy nature, too, because there’s nothing the inhabitants of coral reefs across the world like more than having their parasites nibbled off them by a willing cleaner wrasse. What’s particularly remarkable is these tiny, often brightly-coloured fish will service even dangerous predators such as groupers and barracudas, like a masseuse kneading out the muscle knots from the henchmen of the mob.
Satin bowerbird
Decorating the (gestating) baby’s nursery is a time-honoured task for the male of the household while the prospective mother deservedly puts her feet up – and not just for humans.
Satin bowerbirds are the ultimate DIYers – frankly, just flagrant show-offs – of the avian world, not just constructing an elaborate bower to impress his lady friend, but adorning it with bright blue objects ranging from parrot feathers to clothes pegs. In fact, Mademoiselle Bower doesn’t lay her eggs in her beau’s edifice, but disappears to raise their offspring on her own while he entices another potential paramour with his artistic creativity.
Prairie dogs
“Oh look, here comes Jill.”
“Whoa, who’s that?”
“Look out, that guy’s got a knife!”
Humans use words to tell their companions about the different risks posed by other people, and so – it turns out – do prairie dogs. Years of study by Professor Con Slobodchikoff in Northern Arizona has revealed they have distinctly different calls for threats such as coyotes, hawks, domestic dogs and humans, and will also alert their compatriots to the presence of less dangerous species such as cats, badgers and even pronghorn antelopes and cows.
The call will vary depending on how quickly a threat is approaching, and individual humans are even distinguished from each other.
Ambrosia beetles
Millions of years before humans discovered they could create more reliable food supplies by growing it instead of foraging, insects had found this out for themselves.
Most of us are aware of the leafcutter ants who take leaf clippings back to their nest in order to cultivate a fungus which they eat, but they are not the only ones – a group of more than 3,400 species of so-called ambrosia beetles are also farmers, carefully nurturing fungi, in the xylems of trees, which is their only food source.
Their relationship is so strong, that the fungus only exists where it is farmed. Alas, the beetles’ horticultural habits can destroy living trees, making them a pest for the logging industry.
Pistol shrimps and goby fish
Luxury flats or gated communities will often employ caretakers or even guards to keep the residents safe and the riffraff out. And so it is for the pistol shrimp, which uses its formidable claws to dig itself a burrow but also happens to be blind. How, then, does it know when it’s safe to venture out?
Enter the goby, a small but hawk-eyed fish that trades the fact that it can see for refuge in the shrimp’s lair. The pistol shrimp lays an antenna on the goby – if there’s danger about, the fish shivers, alerting its friend. If the coast is clear, the shrimp can emerge to carry out routine maintenance on its home. Ecologists call it symbiosis, but it’s really just a standard security guard arrangement.
Vampire bats
Taking round a home-cooked meal to a friend or neighbour who’s been ill or unable to cook themselves for a few days would be pretty standard for most of us, and vampire bats do something quite similar – only they regurgitate part of their blood meal for other, often unrelated bats that haven’t been able to feed that night, a behaviour that helps strengthen community cohesion.
And, of course, the blood donor may benefit the next time they have an off night. Female vampire bats are like us in another way – they meet up with friends for dinner like a scene from Sex and the City, though whether they discuss Samantha’s latest sexual adventures is open to question.
Naked mole-rats
Remember the Morlocks, the terrifying sub-humans that lived underground hundreds of thousands of years into the future in the sci-fi classic, The Time Machine? Their strange subterranean society has echoes in the lives of naked mole-rats, bizarre rodents that live in dry grassland regions of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
- From rats nearly 1 metre long to ones poisonous enough to kill an elephant, here are the 6 weirdest rats in the world
- It stretches up to 2.5 miles, is 2.5 metres deep and is home to 300 of the weirdest, most rule-breaking animals on the planet
In their extensive underground cities, naked mole-rats lead an existence that resembles a dystopian human culture, with a single breeding pair lording it over the feudal masses who all contribute to the good of the community, whether by digging new tunnels, foraging for tubers, their main food source, which they find deep underground, nest building or defence.
