Behaviour
Shrimp of the genus Urocaridella are often cryptic or live in caves on the reef and are not associated commensally with other animals. These shrimp assemble around cleaning stations where up to 25 shrimp live in proximity. When a potential client fish swims close to the cleaning station, several shrimp perform a "rocking dance", which is a side-to-side movement to attract the client. Starved shrimp rock more frequently to remove and ingest the ectoparasites than hunger-satisfied shrimps. The increased frequency of the rocking movement suggests there is competition between the shrimp that need the nutritional aid of the fish and the shrimps that are satisfied.
Read more about this topic: Cleaner Shrimp
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“I look on it as no trifling effort of female strength to withstand the artful and ardent solicitations of a man that is thoroughly master of our hearts. Should we in the conflict come off victorious, it hardly pays us for the pain we suffer from the experiment ... and I still persist in it that such a behaviour in any man I love would rob me of that most pleasing thought, namely, the obligation I have to him for not making such a trial.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)