Observational Study Of Aggression

Methods
The methods to this observational behavioral study are quite simple. Every day at eight o’clock in the morning, I would walk out to the front lawn of Broward hall and observe the behaviors of the many squirrels that lived in the area during the breeding season. This was the first part of my observational study. These observations would become my experimental data to compare to the control that would be studied in the off season. My days started on Wednesday so I can observe behavior on both human-populated days and human deserted days. I would take notes on movement, posturing, interspecies interactions, intraspecies interactions, and the general health of the squirrel population. The observations were primarily observational in nature due to the lack of trapping, tagging, and other equipment to take more quantitate observations. After the breeding season had ended, I record the same kinds
I also saw a few fights between two or more squirrels as they fought over scraps of food. The level of aggression was much higher here than in the nonbreeding week, where I saw no mating chases and next to no fights. There was still some aggression as squirrels chased each other from their respective trees. Over the nonbreeding week, I saw more foraging behavior than from the breeding week. Foraging was still the most prevalent part of the squirrels’ day, but this behavior increased as there were less people around and when the overall breeding season ended. In the breeding season, there was a much higher amount of aggressive chasing, tail flagging, aggressive vocal chatter, and biting between squirrel than in the non-breeding season. In summary, the amount of noticeable aggression towards other squirrels were much higher in the breeding season than in the non-breeding season. Vigilance and foraging behavior was slightly higher in the non-breeding