History of animal behavior

Who proposed the Chain of Being (Scala naturae)?

Aristotle proposed the idea of a hierarchical structure of life, where every species is aligned in a linear progression from the simplest to increasingly complex organisms (humans).

In Principles of Psychology, who proposed a model of behavior similar to Aristotle’s Chain of Being?

Herbert Spencer

What were Darwin’s contributions?

Origin of Species- presented mechanism for explaining different behaviors btwn species: Natural selection

Descent of Man- described sexual selection in behavior

Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals- anthropomorphic field observations of emotion nd behavior (behavior increased in complexity as a brain did too)

Found two major subdisciplines- ethology nd comparative psychology

What is ethology?

focuses primarily on evolution and function of behavior

usually via field studies

focused on innate behavior in birds, fishes and insects

What is Comparative Psychology?

focuses on the physiology, learning, and development of behavior

usually conducted in a laboratory

focused on learned behavior in mammals

What did George Romanes contribute?

he supported Darwin’s evolutionary idea of behavior and the continuity of behavior from one species to the next (was his student)

created the table of emotions

one of the founders of comparative psychology (his work postulated a similarity of cognitive functioning btwn animals and humans)

he stated that animal behavior was instinctual and based on tropisms

Jacob Loeb

What is a tropism?

a physiochemical response to a stimulus, can move towards or away from the stimulus

Who did Jacques Loeb influence?

B.F Skinner (one of the founders of animal behavior)

Who attempted to tie both approaches of comp psych + ethology together? and developed the four questions of animal behavior

Niko Tinbergen

What are the four questions of animal behavior?

what are the mechanisms that cause a particular behavior?

how did this particular behavior develop?

what is the survival value of this particular behavior?

how did this particular behavior evolve?

Who founded ethology?

Niko T, Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch

the range of extent of a particular behavior by looking at related species (NB), “Comparative Method”

Konrad Lorenz work

motor responses initiated by an environmental stimulus that can be followed through to completion without the continuing influence of the external stimuli

Fixed Action Patterns

What produces a FAP?

sign stimulus (the environmental factor)

sign stimulus causes by a conspecific is called

releaser

long behaviors and involved being composed of a successive series of FAPs

chain of reactions

when there are two explanations possible, he urged that the simplest explanation be chosen

Morgan’s Canon

helped comparative psychology to become more objective by removing the subjective

Morgan

studied animal behavior, his work led to operant conditioning and led to the law of effect?

Thorndike

Who developed the idea of classical conditioning?

Pavlov

animal would find a solution to a problem (obtaining food, gaining freedom) accidentally at first. then experiment would be repeated to see if the subject would learn and be able to cause the solution increasingly faster in successive trials.

Operant conditioning

animal develops conditioned reflex

a rewarding stimulus was paired with an innocuous stimulus. over time they would be associated with each other

classical conditioning

a school of psychology that restricts the study of behavior to events that can be visually observed. identifies stimuli that elicit a response and what causes that response behavior to be maintained.

behaviorism

who followed behaviorism and also used problem boxes but used food rewards.

BF Skinner

branch of comp psych looking at the physiological basis of behaviors

physiological psychology

first physiological psychologist,

discovered the mind is located in the brain,

carried out localized lesions of brain in pigeons n rabbits… showed different regions of the brain performed diff functions

Jean Pierre Flourens

attempted to localize learning in the cerebral cortex

well known for his contributions to the study of memory

Lashley

who applied Lashely’s approach to behavior in rats and is the father of behavioral endocrinology

Beach

examines the evolutionary and ecological basis of animal behaviors

behavioral ecology

focuses on the application of evolutionary theory to social behavior

ex) an alarm call by monkey can put it at risk but alerts entire troop to threat

sociobiology

proposed that the evolutionary success should be measured not only by the number of offspring produced by an individual, but also by the effects of that individual’s actions on non-descendent kin

coined the term inclusive fitness

Hamilton

sum of direct and indirect fitness

inclusive fitness

how many of its own offspring it produces and supports

direct fitness

the number of individuals that are not its own offspring (or descendants) that it can add to the population by supporting others

indirect fitness

crystalized the concepts of sociobiology by writing book “Sociobiology”

said it was the systematic study of biological basis of all social behaviors, understanding demography of a population

E.O Wilson

studies the influence of genes or suite of genes on behavior

behavioral genomics

modern version of classical ethology, explains behaviors in terms of impact on Darwinian fitness

behavioral biology

practical utilization of knowledge gained through animal behavior to better understand the needs of animals

applied animal behavior