Abstract
The hooded crow Corvus cornix is a west Palaearctic, solitary nesting, monogamous corvid. In the breeding season, populations are characterized by a social organization wherein breeding pairs are territorial and non-breeding individuals, called floaters, live in flocks. During a study of the breeding ecology of the hooded crow, conducted in a protected flooded area, we monitored nests with video cameras. We recorded two separate incidents when intruders attacked a female at the nest. We believe that she remained in the nest in order to prevent the strangers cannibalizing the nestlings by mantling over the brood. The spatio-temporal occurrence of these attacks suggests that the observed behaviour is intraspecific sexual aggression wherein non-breeding males mounted an immobilized female.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10211-015-0222-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
IntroductionIntraspecific aggression is a widespread phenomenon across the animal kingdom. It often results in settling status, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10211-015-0222-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.2 P
Intraspecific aggression is a widespread phenomenon across the animal kingdom. It often results in settling status, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users
The observed behaviours suggest that the intruders attacked a paired female that did not escape even though she noticed their approach
Summary
Intraspecific aggression is a widespread phenomenon across the animal kingdom. It often results in settling status, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10211-015-0222-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.2 P. It takes a variety of forms that range from physical conflicts to sexual violence One of these is sexual aggression by forced copulation, being an extreme manifestation of intersexual conflict (Low 2004) and has been reported in a wide variety of animal species (Thornhill and Palmer 2000; Low 2005; Adler 2010). Among birds, it is mainly known from waterfowl (McKinney et al 1983; Gowaty and Buschhaus 1998; Adler 2010). For example in socially monogamous species of waterfowl, with a generally low frequency of social polygyny, the only way of increasing the reproductive success for an unpaired male is by resorting to forced copulations (Adler 2010)
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