Download Introduction to Animal Behavior

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Introduction to Animal
Behavior
Animal Behavior
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Essential Questions
1. What is animal behavior?
2. Why do animals behave the way they do?
3. Why do we study animal behavior?
4. What are the major components of the Theory of
Evolution?
5. How does the Theory of Evolution relate to the study of
animal behavior?
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Ethology
1. Ethology – study of animal behavior
2. Animal Behavior –
1. The way an animal acts and behaves
2. Anything an animal does involving action and response to a stimulus
3. Stimulus – a thing or event that evokes a specific function; something that causes
a response
1. Ex: Change in temperature or weather; A gazelle seeing a lion so it runs
4. Response – a reaction or answer
5. Reflex – automatic response to a stimulus
Blinking
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Eating
Examples of Behavior
Fleeing
Hunting
Spitting
Mating
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Why do animals behave the way they
do?
1. To find food
2. To avoid predators
3. To reproduce
4. Animal Behavior - Crash
Course Biology #25
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Why do we study animal behavior?
1. Make use of domestic
creatures
1. Horses for riding and
pulling
2. Humans need for food
1. Understanding prey
behaviors
2. Oxen for farm work
2. Where to find fish and
game
3. Dogs for hunting and law
enforcement
3. What is safe and what is
not
4. Migration and seasonal
availability
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Why do we study animal behavior?
3. Ensure animal
welfare
1. Preservation of
natural habitats
2. Manufacturing of
artificial setting
4. To further develop
evolutionary
theory
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Why do we study animal behavior?
5. Knowing how to
appropriately
encounter
dangerous animals
6. Pest control
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Why do we study animal behavior?
7. Invasive species
1. Not native to an area
8. To satisfy intellectual
curiosity
2. Causes changes to the
ecosystem
3. Ex: Asian shore crab,
Emerald ash borer, zebra
mussel
Asian Shore Crab
Emerald Ash Borer
Zebra Mussels
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Intelligence
1. Intelligence – the ability to learn and understand from
experience
1. A sign of high level of intelligence is an animal being self-aware
2. Self-awareness – recognition of consciousness of self
1.
Dolphins reacting to mirror underwater
3. Only 10 animals are self-aware
Bottlenose Dolphin
1. Humans, Orangutans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bottlenose Dolphins,
Elephants, Orcas, Baboons, Rhesus Macaques, European Magpies
2. Primate – omnivorous mammals with highly developed brains
Orca
Chimpanzees
European Magpies
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Intelligence & Behavior
1. Some behaviors can be grouped as innate or
learned
1. Innate behavior – inborn or natural ways of action
1.
2.
3.
Instinct – independent of will or as an automatic response
Ex: Instinctively putting your hands out to break a fall
Ex: Birds hatching from their eggs they do that without being
taught and migrating to warmer climates during winter season
1. Clutch – a nest of eggs or a brood of newly hatched birds
2. Migration – movement from one place to another
2. Learned behavior – actions learned through experience
1.
2.
3.
Ex: ability to ride a bike, ability to use tools
Life – Highly Intelligent Monkey (using tools)
Are crows the ultimate problem solvers? Inside the Animal
Mind - BBC
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Communication & Interactions
1. As animals live together in a particular territory, it will
evoke various behaviors
1. Territory – a defined area of region
2. Population – any group living organisms in a specific area
3. Mode – a way of doing something
1. Ex: Bees communicate by dancing
2. Within the population, animals can exhibit aggressive,
submissive, and dominant behaviors
1. Dominant – Exercising authority or influence
2. Submissive – behavior that shows no resistance
3. Aggression – hostile or destructive behavior
1. Ex: a pack of wolves establishes a hierarchy
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Theory of Evolution
Impacts on Animal Behavior
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Theory of Evolution
1. Over 150 years ago, Charles Darwin published the Origin of
Species
2. Scientists realized that the evolutionary theory of natural
selection provided a revolutionary way of looking at all
living things
1. Theory of Evolution – Change of a species over time (Earth’s
present-day species developed from earlier, distinctly different
species)
2. Scientific starting point to determining why animals do the things
they do and why they have genetic, developmental, sensory,
neuronal, and hormonal mechanisms that make these behavioral
abilities possible
3. As evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhanskey said “Nothing in
biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”
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Principles of Darwin’s Theory of Natural
Selection
1. Overproduction – a population generally produces more
offspring than can survive in the environment (ex: fish lay
millions of eggs to result in few adult fish)
2. Competition – because of overpopulation, there is
competition, or a struggle for survival, between
organisms for space, food, water, light, minerals, or other
limited resources
3. Variation – members of a population show variations
(differences in traits) that make certain individuals better
adapt to survive. (ex: differences in structure, size and
color)
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Principles of Darwin’s Theory of Natural
Selection
4. Natural Selection – since some variations are more
helpful than others, there is a natural selection against
organisms that cannot adapt. Organisms that cannot
adapt die.
1.
Natural Selection – traits that help an organism survive in a
changing environment are passed on to the next generation
2.
Overtime, natural selection causes a change in the inherited
characteristics of a population.
3.
Nature selects those individuals that have traits that will survive
in a changing environment
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Principles of Darwin’s Theory of Natural
Selection
5.
Survival of the Fittest – survival of the fittest applies to those individuals
that have variations that enable them to live and reproduce
1.
6.
Inheritance of Variation – Organisms with helpful variations are more
likely to survive and to reproduce, passing these variations to their
offspring
1.
7.
Differences in reproductive success – with some individuals having more
surviving offspring than others in their population, thanks to their
distinctive characteristics
Heredity – parents are able to pass on some of their distinctive
characteristics to their offspring
Evolution of New Species – Over long periods of time, variations
accumulate in a population. Eventually, there are so many variations
that the population becomes a new species
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Testing Evolutionary Ideas
1. For the purpose of testing evolutionary ideas, we can
assume that whatever trait exists today must have
“won” a reproductive competition that took place in
the past
1. If the assumption is wrong, our tests, if they are fair will reveal
this point
2. If the assumption is correct and the trait did win out over time,
then we are dealing with an adaption
1. Adaption – a characteristic that confers higher inclusive fitness to
individuals than any other existing alternative exhibited by other
individuals within the population
2. A trait that has spread or is spreading or is being maintained in a
population as a result of natural selection
3. Adaptationist– a behavioral biologist who develops and tests
hypotheses on the possible adaptive value of a particular trait
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Darwinian Puzzles
1. Darwinian Puzzles – challenges to evolutionary theory
2. Biologists deal with these puzzles by developing possible explanations based on
natural selection theory for how the surprising trait might actually help individuals
reproduce and pass on their genes
3. Ex: How can it be adaptive for a male langur to harm the offspring of females in
his group, particularly since attacking males can be and sometimes are injured
by mothers defending their babies?
4. Potential Explanation:
1. Males will not kill their own progeny but will focus their attacks on the offspring of other
males
2. New males could father offspring more quickly if they first kill the infants. Females who
lose their infants do resume ovulating and that enables the new males to become
fathers of their replacement offspring
3. Since these predictions have been show to be correct for this species as well as other
primates, various carnivores, horses, rodents and even bats, we can safely conclude
that infanticide as practiced by male langurs is indeed an adaption, the produce of
natural selection
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Summary
1. Evolutionary theory provides the foundation for behavioral biology, the
study of animal behavior (ethology)
2. Charles Darwin realized that evolutionary change would occur if
“natural selection” took place.
3. Researchers interested in the adaptive value of behavioral traits use
natural selection theory to develop particular hypotheses on how a
specific behavior might enable individuals to achieve higher
reproductive success than individuals with alternative traits
4. Adaptationist hypotheses can be tested in the standard manner of all
scientific hypotheses by making predictions about what we must
observe in nature.
5. The beauty of science lies in the ability of scientists to use logic and
evidence to evaluate the validity of competing theories and
alternative hypotheses