Download Animal Behavior

Animal Behavior
CVHS Chapter 51
Behavior
• What an animal does and how it does it
• Proximate causation – “how”
– environmental stimuli, genetics, anatomy and
physiology
• Ultimate causation – “why”
– evolutionary significance of the behavior
– Survival and reproduction
Example
• Observation – Blue gill sunfish breed in
spring and early summer
– Proximate cause – breeding is triggered by
day length activating the pineal gland
• Pineal gland regulates sleep and cycles
– Ultimate cause –reproductive success is
greater when temperature is optimal and food
is abundant
Ethology
• The study of
how animals
behave in their
natural
environments
Instinct
• Innate – behavior that is genetically fixed
– Inherited circuitry that guides behavior
– Example – Dogs digging and burying food
– Example – waggle dance of bees
FAP
• Fixed Action Pattern – unlearned behavior
act (instinct) that is unchangeable and once
initiated is carried to completion
– Sign stimulus – external stimulus required to
trigger the response
– Example – Protective behavior of hen turkeys
• FAP – mothering behavior
• Sign stimulus – cheeping sounds of chicks
– Deaf hen turkey = no mothering  kills chicks
Imprinting
• Behavior that involves learned
and innate components and
once done is irreversible
– Sensitive (critical) period – time
during which the behaviors must
be learned.
– Example – Geese
• Young geese will follow their mother
and learn her behaviors
• Lorenz experiments – geese
imprinted on him instead of their
mother
– Example – Gulls
• If parent does not bond will offspring
during the first 2 day she will not
recognize them as her own and they
will most likely not survive.
Nature vs. Nurture
• Nature – genetic
component
• Nurture – environmental
component
• Both affect behavior
• Innate behaviors –
STRONG genetic
component yet still
requires an environment
to be expressed
Movement
• Kinesis – change in
activity or turning rate in
response to a stimulus
• Taxis – automatic
orientation toward or
away from a stimulus
– Positive taxis – toward
the stimulus
– Negative taxis – away
from the stimulus
• Migration – movement
over long distances
Sandpipers move away from water
as the wave comes in
Migration Behaviors
• Piloting – moves from one
familiar location to another
until it reaches its
destination
• Orientation – can detect
compass directions and
travels in a straight line until
the destination is reached
• Navigation – uses current
location and compass
directions to determine
what direction to go
Communication
• Signal – behavior that elicits a response
• Transmission, reception, and response to
the signal = communication
• Chemical – pheromones
• Different species have heightened senses
which are used for communication.
– Visual
– Auditory
– Tactile
Learning
• Modification of behavior based on specific
experiences
• Habituation – learning to ignore irrelevant
stimuli
– “Cry wolf”
• Imprinting – sensitive “critical” time period
• Maturation – development of neuromuscular
system that allows for behavioral
improvement
– Birds “learning to fly” – wings must mature first
Associative Learning
• Ability of an animal to associate one stimulus
with another event or outcome
• Classical conditioning – learning through
repeated instances
– Pavlov’s dogs – ringing a bell induced salivation
in dogs even when there was no food
• External neutral stimulus begins to have meaning
• Operant conditioning – trial and error
learning
– Reward system – animals behavior determines
Animal Cognition
• The ability of an
animals nervous
system to perceive
and make judgments
about its environment
• Insight learning –
reasoning or
innovation
– problem solving
– Ability to approach a
new problem and
figure out a way to
deal with it
Feeding Behavior
• Foraging – essential to
survival and reproduction
• Herds, flocks, packs, and
schools
• Generalists – optimal
foraging
– Choose the most nutritious
available that will be the least
energetically expensive to
consume
• Specialists - highly adaptive
behaviors specific for their
food
Social Behavior
• Interaction between 2 or more
animals usually within the same
species
• Agnostic – aggressive or submissive
– Competition for a resource or mate
• Dominance hierarchy – top ranking
system
– Pecking order of hens – top hen controls
the rest
– Wolves – top female allows other to
mate when food is abundant
• Only she mates if food is scarce
Social Behavior
• Territoriality – defending
and excluding other
individuals
– Used for feeding, mating,
raising young
• Altruistic – behaviors the
reduce the fitness of the
organism and increase
another’s fitness
– Kin selection – family
members tend to be more
altruistic to one another
• Coefficient of relatedness
Mating Systems
• Promiscuous – no strong bond between
members
• Monogamous – one male and one female
mate for long periods of time
• Polygamous – one individual mates with
many
– Polygyny – one male w/ many females
– Polyandry – one female w/ many males