Niklas Ban wrote:I guess that the brain of Natrix is just able to "think" about one thing for example "fleeing-mode" "eating-mode",
so if a Natrix know you are there it will decide to flee instead of hunting.
No, just suppose I'm not there, or pretending not to be there - keeping quite frozen, not interferring.
I used to do that. The frogs not fleeing, the snakes not fleeing, just lazily moving a little bit from
time to time, ignoring me and each other.
If I am right a simple brain as the Natrix or frog brain needs a stimulus to react. If they both lay in water it might be the case that the brian of Natrix just don't get the stimulus to attack the frog, this is why they often seen next to each other.
Maybe you underestimate snake brains. E.g., vipers feed both on small mammals and birds,
but use two different procedures to catch them, reflecting an at least two-line programme:
(1) If it has fur, bite and release,
(2) if it has feathers, bite and hold.
Pretty smart, don't you think? And they don't LEARN that from their parents, because with
snakes there just isn't any parental care of the offspring, that's an established fact.
Or consider a two-line programme used by the constrictors:
(1) First bite and hold tight,
(2) only if this succeeds, wrap a few coils around and start to constrict.
If they fail securing the prey with a bite, they don't go to step (2), they either retry step (1)
or give up the whole thing.
Male-to-male combats obviously involve a lot more "sofistication" than the above examples.
First, there is quite an elaborate PROCEDURE, and what fascinates me the most is that in
the end the opponents realize who won and who lost, and behave accordingly, both of them.
That's way above anything one might call a "stimulus"... I'd call it understanding.