I mentioned this before on another thread but there’s some good behaviors I think should be added and some I’m being sarcastic about
Coprophagia: young elephants will do this to obtain minerals , adults have been recorded going right to the source in a rather morbid method which the other elephant doesn’t seem to mind. Who knows maybe this can help with poop clean up in an elephant habitat.
Spitting: attribute this to llamas, when I worked with alpacas, the crias (baby camelids) would often wonder towards females that were not their mothers and the females would aggressively spit at the cria. This behavior suggested that it’s a method so the crias would not attempt to nurse from a female that is not their mother. Maybe the llamas can spit at guests that are walking through the habitat.
Teeth licking: so I have noted that wolves do this behavior. Members of the pack will approach the alpha male and female and they will lick their teeth for a few minutes each day as a sign of acknowledging their status. A friend of mines wolf dog often would jump on me and humorously show her teeth to me, was explained to that she wanted me to lick her teeth.
This, and with the llamas and alpacas, evidently the females are continuously receptive if they aren't pregnant (also, they lie down to mate). Breeders of these animals confirm that their females are pregnant by having a "spit off." Evidently, pregnant females will rebuff overly amorous suitors by spitting at them.
Dogs spend a lot of time licking one another's mouths too, and of course they love trying to insert their tongues in ours (mine usually do it when I'm not paying attention to them, trying to lie on the sofa and read, and ugh, slimy dog tongue in my mouth). I've always wondered if this was derived from the juvenile wolf (and sometimes dogs do this for their pups too) practice of licking the adults' mouths to trigger regurgitation of food. The so-called alpha wolves are just the parents of the pack, so maybe their maturing offspring and young, pre-breeding adults continue to do this while they still live in their natal pack.
There's something dogs do called a "submissive grin" as well, where they show their incisors (but it's not a snarl). One of mine tries to lick my mouth after he does this.
Wish they had animals do the
Flehmen response too, which is a baring of the teeth by raising the upper lip or making a sort of "sneering" face (domestic cats do this sometimes). A number of animal types, including equids, tapirs, felines, giraffes, goats/sheep, and cervids (deer), some insectivores, and even elephants (though they use their trunk) do this to get a scent into their vomerinasal organ. Males do it when smelling the urine of a female in estrus, but females will do it too in various social situations.
It would definitely be cool to see more species specific behaviors, but I suppose that would be a lot of work to engineer this for each individual species, or even for groups of related species with similar social behaviors).
