famous ethologists

What is ethology?

the study of behavior

Why is behavioral biology important?

It draws on related topics: genetics, anatomy, physiology, evolutionary behavior, and neurobiology

Behavioral biology does what?

Traces neural circuits that underline animal behavior

What is a neural circuit

the steps/pathway between stimulus to action/response

What is anatomy?

The structure of body parts and where it is (organs, bones, muscles)

What is physiology?

How body systems function with other body systems

What do animal behaviorists do?

Study the way animals behave, determine the causes of behavior, and what factors can prompt behavior changes

What is baseline behavior?

What is considered normal behavior for an individual/ species in a natural environment

What is anthropomorphism?

Assigning human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human things/ beings

Is anthropomorphism learned or instinctual in humans?

instinctual

Some people are more inclined to anthropomorphize than others, but it is a common way of what?

Perceiving/ interacting with the world

What might effect how much a person anthropomorphizes?

Empathy, conditions of growing up, imagination

Why is it important to research baseline animal behavior?

To address their welfare standards

How did they find out proper social contact for guinea pigs?

Put them in different social environments and measured their stress levels via blood tests

What are the roots of ethology?

People explored the behaviors of select vertebrae species in the late 19th and early 20th century

Most of what we know came from who?

A few well known people in behavior industry

What did the pioneers of animal behavior/ famous ethologists in general do?

Laid a foundation for virtually very known (wild and domestic) species on planet

Who were the pioneers/ founders/ fathers of animal behavior?

Karl Von Frish, Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen

The founders focused on what more than natural conditions?

field opservation

What did the pioneers of animal behavior do?

emphasized the importance of instintiveness and learned behavior in relation to survival

What did the pioneers of animal behavior use animal behavior as?

a way to learn about the nature of human violence, aggression, psychosomatic, and psychiatric disorders

What is psychosomatic?

social, physiological, and behavioral factors and how they affect bodily processes and quality of life

What did Niko Tinbergen do?

Developed 4 questions to assess a behavior

What were Niko Tinbergen’s 4 questions?

1. How does the behavior iteslf increase the animal’s fitness

2. How has a behavior evolved? How has natural selection modified behavior?

3. How does a behavior develop (throughout an animal’s lifetime)?

4. What is the causation of a behavior?

Who was Ivan Pavlov?

A Russian psychologist famous for his work in classical conditioning

What did Pavlov specifically study?

the gastric system of dogs when he observed that the dogs began salivating in anticipation of food

What did Pavlov found?

modern behavior training through classical/pavlovian conditioning

What is classical conditioning?

Learning to associate an unconditioned/not trained stimulus so that the new/ conditioned stimulus brings about the same response

What was Pavlov’s expiriment?

Would develop an association between a bell that the assistant would sound before feeding with being fed in order to eventually stimulate dog salvation by hearing the bell

What was the conclusion of Pavlov’s expiriment?

By consistently exposing a dog to a particular stimulus (the bell) and simultaneously providing a familiar stimulus (the food) in its mouth, the dog could be made to salivate upon hearing the sound, even without the familiar stimulus (the food)

What was the new stimulus of Pavlov’s expiriment?

the bell

What was the unconditioned stimulus of Pavlov’s expiriment?

the food

What was the unconditioned response of Pavlov’s expiriment?

Salivation

What is behaviorism?

the theory that human and animal behavior can be examined in terms of conditioning without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns

What is conditioning?

Learning through association

What did John B. Watson develop?

behaviorism, furthered conditioning (classical conditioning), and generalization

What is generalization?

the tendency to respond to different but similar stimuli in the same way

What were the 3 questions John B Watson wanted to

1. can an infant be conditioned to fear an animal that appears simultaneously with a loud, fearful sound

2. Would the fear transfer to other animals/objects

3. How long would the fears last

What did Watson’s experiment on Little Albert demonstrate?

classical conditioning can be used to create a phobia

What was John B. Watson’s little Albert experiment?

Presented infant (“little Albert”) with a white rat that he originally didn’t fear, then continiously presented the rat with a loud bang that startled him and made him cry

What did the Little Albert experiment show?

after continuous association of the white rat and loud noise, Little Albert was classically conditioned to experience fear at the sight of the rat; this fear was generalized to other stimuli that were similar to the rat (a fur coat, some cotton wool, and a Father Christmas mask)

Why was the Little Albert experiment unethical?

its purpose was to induce a state of fear, causing psychological trauma instead of protecting him from it

B.F. skinner believed that by changing the environment, you could change what?

behavior

What did B.F. Skinner believe

we could both control and predict behavior

What did B.F. Skinner pioneer?

operant conditioning

What is operant conditioning?

learning/training that occurs through rewards and punishments of behaviors

Through operant conditioning, an individual does what?

makes an association between a particular behavior or consequence (consequences can be positive or negative)

What did B.F. Skinner invent?

the Skinner box

What does the Skinner Box demonstrate?

positive reinforcement (increases a behavior): reinforces successive (one after another) approximations (stuff that’s similar to desired behavior) to the final target behavior and also demonstrates negative reinforcement

Describe how the Skinner Box functions

Positive reinforcement: box has lever on the side, and as the rat moved around the box, would accidentally knock the lever and a food pellot would drop (getting food if they pressed the lever ensured that they would repeat the action)

Negative reinforcement: placed a rat in the box and then turns on an electric current, causing discomfort, as the rat moved around the box it would accidentally knock the lever switching off the electrical current (learned to go straight to this lever after this became repeated)

It even taught the rats to avoid electric current altogether by turning on a light before the electric current came on (teaching them to press the lever before electric current was turned on)

What did the Skinner box demonstrate?

shaping of behaviors

What is shaping of behaviors?

the process of reinforcing small behaviors in steps until an animal achieves the ultimate goal (a larger behavior you want to improve)

What did Harry Harlow study?

attachment theory

What is attachment theory?

the importance of bonding between a mother/caregiver and the young

What did Harry Harlow conclude?

that for a monkey to develop normally, they must have some interaction with an object that they can cling to during the firsts months of life known as the critical period

Why do monkeys cling to mothers?

in times of stress, the monkey runs to the mother and clings to her, decreasing stress, it’s a natural response

if deprivation from a mother lasted after the critical period, what would happen?

no amount of exposure to mothers or peers could alter the damage

What was Harry Harlow’s experiment?

He brought in an infant monkey, replacing their mother with an inanimate object and then would scare the monkey; he brought some other monkeys up on their own, with 20 minutes a day in a playroom with other monkeys

What were the results of Harry Harlow’s experiment?

in place of the mother, the money would get soothed to some extent by clinging with the object

there was a differentiation between social deprivation and maternal deprivation

What is Dmitry Belyave responsible for?

How dogs we know today were domesticated from wolves

What were the questions Belyave wanted to answer?

1. Why is domestication so rate?

2. Why do domesticated animals often differ physically from their wild relatives in similar ways across species?

3. Why could species like the horse get tamed, while close relatives like the zebra, could not?

What was Dmitry Belyave’s experiment?

he selectively bred two sets of wild silver foxes, those least afraid of humans were mated to create a tame population, while another set was selected for agressiveness

What were the results of Dmitry Belave’s experiment?

in just 35 generations. the researchers created a group of pet foxes that bond with humans and a group of pet foxes that attacks/ flees from humans on sight

physical traits differed in these two populations

What is neotany?

animals that retain juvenile traits for domestication purposes

What did Edward Tollman study?

Purposive behavior and latent learning

What is purposive behavior?

learning is purposeful, intentional, and goal oriented

Provide an example of purposive behavior

studying for a test to get a good grade

What is latent learning?

subconcious learning that stays with the individual until they need to use it

What is an example of latent learning

when animals subconsciously observe their surroundings with no real goal, but use that information when it’s needed for survival

What was Edward Tolman’s experiment?

rats practiced a maze with a treat at the end, then their familiar path was blocked

What did Edward Tolman coclude from his expiriment

the rats had formed a cognitive map of the maze, allowing them to choose a different path to lead them to the reward (latent learning)

the rats eventually completed the maze without a treat present (conditioning

What did Karl Lashley want to find?

studied learning and memory: wanted to find out where memory was stored and how it was accessed

What was Karl Lashley’s experiment?

trained the rats to solve a maze and then cut (legioned) different parts of the cortex

What were the results of Karl Lashley’s experiment?

no singular cut significantly impaired a rat’s ability to complete the maze, but had affects on acquisition and retention of new learning

What were the conclusions of Karl Lashley’s experiment?

equipotentiallity: memories are not localized, they are widely distributed

impairment of the cerebral cortex influences certen types of learning

What is localized?

stored in one specific area (of the brain)

What is another term for memories?

engrams

What is the significance of Donald Griffin?

often considered the reason why animal thought is considered

What did Donald Griffin study?

cognitive ethology

What is cognitive ethology?

how animals thing

What did Donald Griffin do?

observed the specific abilities of animals to gather food and interact with their environment and each other

What did Donald Griffin conclude based off of his observations?

that animals are conscious, thinking beings, not the mere automations as was previously believed- they are unique individuals

What is an automation?

react in one way when presented with certain stimulus

Why do people disagree with Donald Griffin’s ideas?

cognitive ethology is anthropomorphic and subjective

Why are critiques of Donald Griffin often disproven?

those in the field who have studied the ways that animals formed concepts and mental statues based on their interaction with their environment showed how animals base their actions and anticipate the responses of other sentient beings

What is a sentient beings?

have a central nervous system, a need to seek away from pain, and have an immediate reaction to stimuli

Who was William Morton Wheeler?

expert on ethology, behavior, and classification of ants/ social insects

Some early myrmecologosits considered ant society as what?

the ideal society and sought to find solutions to human problems by studying them

What are mymecologists

peopls who study ants

What did William Morton Wheeler discover?

that the social behavior of ants was among the most complex in the world

What did William Morton Wheeler do with his observations on ants?

developed a comparitve analysis for studying the sociology and psychology of insects

used the ant colony as a behavioral comparison for humans

Who was Edward O Wilson?

the ‘King of Ants’ and the ‘Grandfather of evolutionary psychology’

What is sociobiology?

the study of natures role in determining behavior and evolution

Edward O Wilson said that “genes play a central role ____”

in human behavior

What is evolutionary psychology?

explores the link between genetic and cultural evolution

There is almost no (behavior or structure), no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn’t what?

prove to serve a function

Chemical signals play a major role in what?

communication and behavior

What can chemical signals indicate?

mating, danger/warning, stress levels, territory marking

Advanced ____ and Communcation plays a role in species ____

altruism; survival

What is altruism?

behavior that benefits another individual at a cost to oneself