I know that happy pet chins popcorn, but do their wild counterparts do it also? By natural selection, things that have a negative impact on survival tend to get selected out, so what evolutionary advantage does popcorning serve?
Purpose of popcorning
- Thread starter Devi Xiao
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knitdragon
Member
Just off the top of my head popcorning may be an evasive maneuver. I've noticed that when my chin popcorns he changes direction in mid-air and then runs very fast. That sort of maneuver may help a wild chin evade a predator, since most animals don't change direction that fast. If a chin popcorns when being chased by lets say a fox, the chin keeps running in the direction he just came from and the fox loses time because it has to make an arc or slow down in order to reverse the direction of the chase.
When chins popcorn, they're usually excited and/or have an abundance of energy - popcorning could just be a byproduct of the extra energy in their system. In a social context, perhaps this is used to indicate mood to the rest of the herd? However, it could just be that chins in the wild don't popcorn because it's an unnecessary expenditure of energy?
