ANIMAL behaviour experts have been looking at how their colleagues behave,
and have found that those who study the most colourful animals are also the most
flamboyant.
Jonathan Dale of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole,
Massachusetts, and his colleagues watched 42 presentations at last year鈥檚 ABS
meeting at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. They recorded the number of
times each speaker used a laser pointer to trace shapes on the slide screen
during a 20-minute talk, including wiggles, circles, horizontal and vertical
lines. 鈥淚t was just a matter of doodling during each talk,鈥� Dale says.
One of the recorders, Jenny Basil of the City University of New York, looked
for any correlations between the types of shapes used and various distinguishing
characteristics of the speakers, such as age, sex, social status (professor or
student) and habitat 鈥攚hether they lived east or west of the Mississippi
River. But none could be linked to the speaker鈥檚 pointer style.
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鈥淭he only correlation we found was with the speaker鈥檚 study organism,鈥� Dale
says. Bird behaviourists used an average of four different shapes per talk,
whereas scientists studying other vertebrates averaged only 2.3. Invertebrate
biologists had the least varied pointer repertoire, using only 1.5 shapes per
talk on average.
Dale says people with more flamboyant personalities may be drawn to
birds鈥攚ith their bright plumage and cheery songs鈥攚hereas more
reserved scientists might prefer prawns and starfish. The researchers would like
to collect more data, but they worry they may now have biased their study
population by presenting the results at this year鈥檚 meeting.
