Conflict in the animal world

Abstract

In a pond full of breeding toads, a large male clings onto the back of a female, waiting for her to lay her eggs so that he can fertilize them. A smaller male approaches but moves away when his rival lets out a loud, low pitched croak (Fig. 1.1(a)). On an evening in late May, an adult male hare persistently chases a female. Whenever he catches up with her she attacks him, standing upright on her hind legs and repeatedly and forcefully beating his head with her fore paws (Fig. 1.1(b)). The male eventually leaves without having mated. Shortly after they emerge in the spring, foraging ants from two neighbouring nests meet and start to fight, chasing and threatening members of the rival colony and seizing, biting and dragging them about (Fig. 1.1(c)). Thousands of reinforcement workers arrive from the two nests, joining in a full-scale battle which is visible from a considerable distance as a seething dark mass and which continues on and off for several weeks. By the end of the battle hundreds of thousands of workers have been killed.