Who could get tired of their job if it involves the wonders of animal behaviour? asks Emma Napper
As jobs go, studying animal behaviour must be one of the strangest and most self-indulgent. Watching animals and finding out why they do what they do has been an obsession of mine for as long as I can remember.
Generations of scientists and natural historians have enjoyed watching the natural world and we now know quite a lot about the types of animal there are on Earth and a bit about the amazing variation in the ways that animals look. However we are just starting to learn about animal behaviour and how it evolves.
Every living organism is driven by a desire to survive long enough to have as many offspring as possible. But animals are not robots following a set of simple commands. They frequently show behaviours as complex and varied as our own.
The following three examples are just a few pieces of current research work I particularly like. They begin to explore the different ways that other animals approach life. As we watch bugs, mammals, fish and birds, we try to work out how they solve the trials of life. Sometimes we find behaviours that are completely alien and sometimes behaviours that are incredibly similar to our own.
Consider spiders. For many male spiders the major problem in life is females. Females are quite happy to eat the males during or after sex, if the mood takes them. This "sexual cannibalism" may seem gruesome, but it is common in spiders where the females are often much bigger and stronger than the males.
For females, eating the male after sex means that she gets fertilised eggs and a meal. But for the male the pros and cons are less clear. He wants to make sure that he remains mating long enough to fertilise the female, but he also needs to remain alive so he can survive to mate again.
Different spiders have different solutions to this problem. Males of the crab spider tie the female down with silk, other spiders mate with females only when they are already eating, and some simply run away. Sometimes the males' escape attempts work and sometimes the females get their meal.
However, male Australian redback spiders make no attempt to escape. The male creeps onto a female's web, tapping a love tune with his legs to pacify her. After a long courtship the female accepts him, but then, in the middle of mating, the male somersaults and positions himself in front of her jaws, actually encouraging her to eat him.
This does not seem to make any sense and has puzzled scientists for years. Do males that sacrifice themselves actually manage to have more offspring that those that escape? The answer seems to be yes. For a male redback, the main threat to his success at fatherhood is not finding more females but the other males waiting on his female's web.
Males that mate for longer have the greatest chance that the female will use his sperm (and not that of other males) to fertilise her eggs. By allowing her to eat him, he increases the amount of time they are mating, and also takes her mind off the other males for a while.
Male salamanders from the forests of America are not so complacent. They are also worried about their mates finding other males, but their solution is very different from that applied by the spiders.
Male salamanders bully females that have even "platonic" friendships with other males. Salamanders normally live in pair bonds and although females prefer their mate to other paired males, they are just as likely to mate with available single males as with their own partner. Scientists working on the salamanders think that males try to persuade females to remain faithful by physically punishing them, even if they are only foraging on another male's territory.
Capuchin monkeys living in the forests of Venezuela have a problem with mosquitoes. Just like us, the monkeys suffer from mosquito bites that are irritating and spread disease. Amazingly their solution is very similar to our own - they use insect repellent, of a kind. Scientists noticed that the monkeys were collecting millipedes. They watched the monkeys chew the millipedes before rubbing them over their fur. Chewing a millipede annoys but does not kill it and the millipede starts to produce a cocktail of bad tasting chemicals to try to protect itself.
This is just what the monkeys are after, as the chemicals from the millipede are very good insect repellents. By rubbing themselves in millipede chemicals the monkeys have found a natural bug spray that may stop them being attacked by biting insects.
Reading these and other pieces of work about animal antics leaves me in awe at the diversity that faces us in nature. It will take us a long time to understand the complexities of animal behavior.
• Emma Napper is a research scientist participating in the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Media Fellow programme