Final answer:
Aggressive behaviors in animals are often ritualized to prevent serious injuries and reduce the risk of actual fighting. These displays convey the animal's willingness and capacity to fight, serving as a deterrent and a strategy to avoid harmful physical conflicts over resources.
Step-by-step explanation:
Aggressive behaviors between animals are often ritualized to avoid both animals sustaining significant injuries. This type of behavior is evident when animals like dogs display their teeth to intimidate others, or gorillas engage in chest beating and pounding the ground. These aggressive displays signal not only the willingness to fight but also the potential strength and fighting ability of the animal. They serve as a preventive measure to avoid physical confrontation that could result in serious injury or death. In the context of natural selection, even bluffs or exaggerated displays may be favored, as they can effectively deter opponents without leading to harmful conflicts.
Within the animal kingdom, competition for resources such as territory, water, food, or mates is a common cause of aggression. Animals engage in both intraspecific competition (within the same species) and interspecific competition (between different species). Use of ritualized aggression is a key strategy to mitigate the potentially high costs of direct physical conflicts which could lead to predation, severe injuries, or even death.