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Behavior
Topic 18
I. Behavior
• A. fixed-action patterns – behaviors that are
important and cannot depend on learning – a
complex coordinated behavioral response
triggered by specific stimulation from the
environment – innate, highly stereotypical –
must continue until completed – discovered
by Niko Tinbergen
– 1. releaser – the stimulus that elicits the behavior
– 2. example – birds will retrieve and care for an egg
of their species, spiders will spin webs, flocking of
birds, swimming actions of fish
• B. learned behavior – involves a change in the
way an animal behaves based on experience
– 1. habituation – a simple learning pattern in which
repeated stimulus creates a decreased
responsiveness to that stimulus – for example, if
you poke a snail it will retract into its shell, but if
you poke it repeatedly, the snail will learn to
ignore the stimulus
– 2. classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning
– association of a physical response with an
environmental stimulus – Pavlov studied the
salivation of dogs – if you ring a bell and then
present the dog with food, the dog will eventually
salivate when it hears a bell
• (a) neutral stimulus – a stimulus that will not by itself
elicit a response such as the bell
• (b) conditioned reflex – product of the conditioning
experience – salivation at the ringing of a bell
– 3. operant or instrumental conditioning – also
known as trial and error learning - conditioning
responses to stimuli with the use of reward or
reinforcement – when the organism exhibits a
behavioral pattern that the experimenter would
like to see repeated, the animal is rewarded which
results in the organisms repeating this behavior
more often – how dogs are trained – can teach
rats in cages to depress a lever to release food discovered by B.F. Skinner
– 4. modification of conditioned behavior –
organisms eventually “unlearn” conditioned
responses if they are not reinforced – extinction is
the gradual elimination of conditioned responses
in the absence of reinforcement – the recovery of
a lost conditioned response is called spontaneous
recovery
– 5. limits of behavioral change
• (a) neurologic – some organisms don’t have the brain
power
• (b) chronologic – learning must occur during a narrow
window during the organism’s development in order to
be successful – these time periods are called critical
periods
– 6. imprinting – a process in which environmental
patterns or objects presented to a developing
organism during a brief critical period in early life
become accepted permanently as an element of
its behavioral environment - for example, the first
thing a duckling sees is it mother, but if another
large, moving object is seen first, the duckling will
follow it instead because it believes that it is its
mother – discovered by Konrad Lorenz
• C. intraspecific interactions – methods used to
communicate with other members of its
species
– 1. behavioral displays – a display is defined as an
innate behavior that has evolved as a signal for
communication between members of the same
species – for example a song, a call, or a change in
an animal’s physical characteristics (such as the
wagging of a tail)
– 2. pecking order – when a dominant member of the
species prevails over the other members – this
established hierarchy minimizes violent intraspecific
aggressions
– 3. territoriality – members of land-dwelling species
defend a limited area or territory from intrusion by
other members of the same species – usually
occupied by a male or a male and female pair distributes members of the species so that the
environmental resources are not depleted in a small
region – also intraspecific competition is reduced
– 4. behavioral cycles
• (a) circadian rhythms – daily cycles of behavior – for
example, daily cycles of eating – the internal control is
hunger – the external control is the light of the sun
• 5. waggle dance - By performing this dance,
successful foragers can share with other
members of the colony, information about the
direction and distance to patches of flowers
yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources,
or to new housing locations – discovered and
described by Karl von Frisch
• D. Altruism – this behavior reduces an
individual’s reproductive fitness while
increasing the fitness of the family
– 1. kin selection – an animal sacrifices itself for its
relative