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Scientific Study of Non-Violence
sufficiently intimidating spectacle to its opponent, the latter slinks away; this obviously is preferable. The victory can be won without the shedding of blood. The species as a whole is able to settle its disputes without undue damage to its members and obviously benefits tremendously in the process.
Throughout the higher forms of animal life, there has been a strong trend in this direction--the direction of ritualised combat. Threat and counter-threat have largely replaced actual physical combat. Full-blooded fighting does, of course, still take place from time to time, but only as a last resort, when aggressive signalling and counter-signalling have failed to settle a dispute.
Elaborate threat rituals are observed in different animal species. The contestants circle one another in a characteristically stilted fashion, their bodies tense and stiff. They may bow, shake, shiver, swing rhythmically from side to side or make repeated short, stylised runs. They paw the ground, arch their backs, or lower their heads. All these intention movements act as vital communication signals and combine effectively with the autonomic signals to provide a precise picture of the intensity of the aggression that has been aroused, and an exact indication of the balance between the urge to attack and the discretion to retreat.
One of the side-effects of an intense inner conflict is that an animal sometimes exhibits strange and seemingly irrelevant pieces of behaviour. It is as if the tensed up creature, unable to perform either of the things it is desperate to do, finds an outlet for its pent-up energy in some other, totally unrelated activity. Its urge to flee blocks its urge to attack and vice-versa, so it vents its feelings in some third activity: this is called displacement. Threatening rivals can suddenly be seen to perform curiously stilted and incomplete feeding movements, and then return instantly to their full threat postures. Or they may scratch or clean themselves in some way, interspersing these movements with the typical threat manoeuvre. Some species perform displacement nest-building actions, picking up pieces of nest material that happen to lie nearby and dropping them on to imaginary nests. Others indulge in instant sleep, momentarily tucking their heads into a snoozing position, yawning or stretching.
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