In the zoo, tourists are often seen clapping their hands at the male peacocks in the peacock garden. When peacocks hear applause, they will proudly perform for tourists. But peacocks erect beautiful feathers to people, which may be to show love to female peacocks, to demonstrate to similar male peacocks, or to warn people. Its colorful feathers are actually its weapon to show itself and scare the enemy. Peacock is spreading some kind of visual information by showing its tail feathers, but unfortunately, the tourists present mistakenly accepted and passed on another kind of information.
There are many forms of visual communication, such as the huge horns on the head of male reindeer on the grassland and the beautiful long mane on the neck of male lion. The appearance characteristics of these animals are all visual signals transmitted to their female counterparts. Frogs are green in the grass, but the detached and detached protective colors often confuse natural enemies or prey by spreading false visual information.
The form of visual communication also includes animal body language. Mimicry turned deciduous butterflies into dead leaves and deceived the birds' eyes. When the hounds face their opponents, they stretch their heads forward, their front legs lean forward, squat down, push their hind legs to the ground, show their teeth and erect their ears to show the threat to their opponents. In front of the owner, the hound will bow its head and wag its tail to show obedience. When the male bee source woos the female bee butterfly, it will show a rather complicated ceremony: revealing the most beautiful body color, poking water in the direction of the female bee sister's eating with his tail, and the water with the male peak burns a special smell. The moth snail is stimulated by sight, smell and touch at the same time. Visual communication is also the simplest and most direct way of communication for human beings. Whether it's Yang Guifei's smiling back, or Zhang Yide's blowing beard and glaring, lovers' affectionate eyes, hostile glare ... all these reflect the role of visual communication.
Visual communication is a very common way of communication in the animal kingdom, which has the advantages of simplicity, accuracy and rapidity. However, this way of communication also has many limitations. In nature, few animals only use visual communication as the main way of communication. They often use visual communication and other communication methods to send or obtain accurate information.
Auditory communication
In order to attract the opposite sex and repel the same sex, birds' songs to declare territorial possession and screams to warn predators are all auditory communication. Fade, a resident scientist, recorded the crow's cry. "They took the music player for a ride in the village. By playing the cry of one of the crows, they finally solved the crow problem that puzzled the villagers for a long time. In which the principle of auditory communication is skillfully used.
Because of the different pronunciation mechanisms of animals, the wonderful sounds they make are also very different. Mammals rely on their throats, birds rely on sound pipes, insects often rely on the vibration of their wings, and frogs rely on sound sacs to make sounds. Because sound waves can propagate around obstacles, the diverse combination of sound frequencies lays the foundation for the transmission of various information. The same vocal organ can emit a series of sounds with a little adjustment, which is very flexible, so the spread of sound is not limited by day and night. However, the spread of sound is instantaneous and fleeting.
Of course, in the animal world, some animals rely on ultrasound to communicate and hunt, such as mullet and dolphin, which we are familiar with, and they use ultrasound to communicate.
Chemical communication
As the saying goes, "the mouse is short-sighted." This is because the visual ability of mice is very low, and they can only reach the distance of 12 cm. The hearing of mice is only about 70 kilohertz, and a newspaper is enough to hinder the reception of auditory signals. The mouse's activity environment is very complicated, which easily hinders its poor eyesight. What does the mouse communicate through? This is another way of communication: chemical communication.
Chemical communication means that animals influence or control the behavior of other animals by releasing some chemicals. Chemical communication sometimes affects the activities of the whole animal population, and even regulates the whole population. These chemicals are called pheromones. It has been reported that pheromone may be the most primitive communication signal and the only communication method between prokaryotes such as cyanobacteria and bacteria. The release of chemicals by animals will not only affect the behavior of other individuals, but also affect physiology. For example, the queen bee secretes a compound called "royal jelly", which can inhibit the development of worker bees' ovaries. In addition, chemical communication is an important means to maintain group order. In the ant colony, the queen can't feed herself, but it can secrete a pheromone to lure the worker ants and make them actively feed the queen. Ants' eggs and larvae can also secrete a substance. The life of ant larvae needs certain conditions. When the humidity drops, they stop secreting pheromones, and the worker ants will quickly move them to a humid place, so that the larvae can secrete chemicals that are "delicious food" for the worker ants again.
Speaking of chemical communication, it seems to defend the uncivilized behavior of dogs defecating everywhere. In fact, this is not an uncivilized performance of dogs, but a way to exercise their own chemical communication. Dogs often don't excrete everywhere because their bladders are full. In fact, they just announced to other similar people that this is my place. This is a way to seize territory by relying on chemicals. When the dog touches the ground with three legs and raises one hind leg to pee on the fire hydrant on the road, it means that it has taken the fire hydrant as its own with the smell of urine. The real urination posture of a dog is to lie flat on all fours and squat on the ground.
Tactile communication
Tactile communication is also a quite common way of communication. For animals with limited visual ability or living in an environment where visual communication cannot be used, tactile communication is often an important way to transmit information.
Some fish living in deep-sea areas have poor eyesight due to poor light, but they often have very developed fins and tentacles covered with sensitive nerves. When swimming in the water, they can sense the change of water flow, find and catch prey and receive signals.
Tactile communication can also spread information through other objects in the form of vibration or fluctuation. Male spiders have to go online to find a mate in order to mate. Before surfing the internet, male spiders will make a similar "plucking the strings" action, plucking the wires and making a certain vibration. Female spiders can judge whether they are prey or courtship objects.
Not only lower animals rely on tactile communication, but also tactile communication is quite common and important in higher animals. In the social group of monkeys, monkeys often comb each other's hair. Among them, there are female monkeys out of pity for the young monkeys, flattering the monkey king, and of course, there are also arrogant teasing of the monkey king. What deserves our attention here is that if the newborn monkey is taken away from its mother and raised by a special robot, even if it is healthy, its reaction ability and intelligence are lower than normal monkeys. If people often touch or hug it, the situation will be greatly improved. It is not difficult to see from here that touching and cuddling the little monkey often can improve its reaction and make it more lively when it is young. For human beings, it is more beneficial for children's growth and development for parents to give them more caresses when they are young than to deal with strollers and teddy bears all day.
electrocommunication
After discovering America, many adventurers went there to look for their dream gold. A Spanish expedition led by local Indians entered a low-lying area in the upper reaches of the Amazon River, where there were large and small ponds everywhere. The Indians stopped, and the white people didn't understand that there could be no piranhas here, and of course there could be no crocodiles and pythons. A white man stepped forward to set an example for the Indians, but he didn't go far. He let out a cry and fell on his back. Several companions went to save him and fell into the pond. It was a long time before other companions rescued them. After several hours, these people recovered from their stiff state.
What exactly attacked them? It turns out that in a muddy pond in the tropics, there is a special kind of fish-electric eel, which relies on surface discharge to communicate and prey on each other. The explorers were knocked down by the current released by the electric eel in the pond. The voltage they cast can often reach 600 volts. In nature, not only electric eels and circuits use the strong current generated by the body's power generation organs to hunt for food, but catfish and crocodiles in deep water can also rely on body surface sensors for information exchange between individuals.
The communication behavior of animals evolved through natural selection, and each communication behavior often has a special function and evolution process. This process has experienced many hardships, and in different environments, it has formed a way of communication that adapts to itself.
It can be said that the mode of transmission, environment and some organs are an interconnected network that influences and promotes each other. Under the interaction, they make each other reach a state of coordination. Often, the taller animals are, the more ways they communicate, so that when the environment changes dramatically, they can still exchange information with their companions and tide over the difficulties together. And those creatures who rely on a single communication behavior will completely lose contact with the outside world at this time, and only death will wait for them.
Communication behavior is not only between individuals or groups, but also between cells. Chemical communication and tactile communication are probably the most important two. In the process of cell division, when they touch each other, normal cells will stop dividing, which is called contact inhibition, and it seems to complete some kind of information transmission. Cancer cells do not seem to be affected by this communication and are still growing wildly. Its control and communication behavior need further study. Of course, the communication behavior between cells belongs to the category of cell sociology and is a research hotspot in the field of cell biology at present.