Crouch
Overview and Meaning
Crouch is a form of defensive behavior that is performed to protect the animal from threat or aggression.
Description
This behavior is defined as the animal lying still in a rigid position with its ears down and its eyes closed or nearly closed.
Classification
Contexts
Agonistic interactions can occur in the context of territorial behavior and/or dominance behavior. Territorial behavior and dominance behavior differ in the context that they occur, the resources under competition, and the threat behavior that initiates the interaction.
Variants
A variant of Crouch is Elevated Crouch.
Crouch has 1 variant:
Crouch is a defensive behavior. Defensive behaviors are part of
Agonistic Interactions
The full behavior chain consists of:
Agonistic interactions occur to assert territory or dominance. This can proceed as either mediated aggression or escalated aggression, differentiated by the absence or presence of aggressive behaviors.
Stanford Department of Comparative Medicine presents
A Comprehensive Ethogram of the Laboratory Mouse
