Ritualistic Aggression

• A ritual is a set of behaviours carried out in a set order.
• In some of Konrad Lorenz' early observations of fights between animals of the same species, he notices how little actual physical damage was done.
• Most aggressive encounters between animals have periods of ritualistic signalling (eg. displaying claws and threatening facial expressions, growling, etc). They rarely reach the point of physical aggression.
• Even if animals do engage in physical aggression, Lorenz says that intra-species conflicts end up with ritual appeasement displays, used by one of the animals to display that they're not a threat.
• Ritual appeasement displays indicate acceptance of defeat and leads to a reduction in the victor's aggressive behaviour.
• Both ritualistic signalling and ritual appeasement displays are adaptive, as they stop every aggressive encounter from ending in death, which would threaten the existence of the species.