intro to animal behaviour

• Describe the main factors which shape species and individual behaviour • Discuss the pros and cons of living in groups and strategies for resolving conflict • Identify sensory adaptations and modes of communication. • Discuss relevance of factors shaping species and individual behaviour to captive living and Animal Behaviour identifying normal behaviour; adaptation or constraint?

what is animal behaviour

• physiological and neurologucal signals

• usually adaptive

features of innate species behaviour

highly conserved from distant ancestral species

feeding and foraging

benefits of group living

• food detection/ capture

• anti predator-detection, dilution and defence

• kin selection

• comfort

• social learning

disadvantages of group living

• detection by predators

• competition

• disease risk

costly signals

• where possible animals adapt to resolve conlict without violence

• males competing for mates may develop energy costly signals- demonstrating virility to potential mates and also competitiveness to rivals- only fight when unclear who would win

dominance hierarchies

• series paired relationships in group: one individual has priority of resource access over the other

• dominance conferred by subordinate

• stable hierarchy- low aggression maintianed by clear but often sublet signals

familiarity and individual recognition

• frequent enoug interactions to preduct fight outcomes

• usually small familiar group

• relies on memories

status badges

• infrequent interactions/impractical to remember indiviudals

• so usually large and/ or unfamiliar groups such as seasonal breeders

• relies on signals of stats eg male house sparrow black bib which is related to testosterone level

too much competition

• increasing group size or reducing food

• subordinates leave

too small

• less dilution effect

• dominants grant subordinates access to resources/breeders

sensory

• color

• brightness

• temporal movement

• spacial

• signals

• field of view eg predators binocular for depth and prey monocular so wide

• olfactory sensitivity

• olfactory range

• signals

• volume

• requency range

expression of gentically determined traits

• can be switched on and off by environmental conditions

• prenatally

• during early development

sensitive periods

periods during life when sensitive to specific learning

filial imprining

follow the first salient thing that moves

sexual imprinting

usually court individuals similar but not too simlar to those you first imprinited on

relatvely permanent and inflexible

abnormalities eg hand rearing

other critical period

socialisation

recognition of young

domestificaition

behavioural repertoire remains but expressed with differing frequency, duration and intensity and social tolderance increased

deliberate trait selecction

eg temperament

labradors demonstrate low aggression across studie

inadverten trait selecion

eg morphology

short snouted puppies sniffed more and elicited moreplay from other puppies vs longer snout

eye cover elicited more bites to body

selection for infantile behaviour and sociability towards humans predisposesseparation anxiety

why cant highly motivated behavour sometimes not be expressed

environmental deficits

what is behavour influenced by

species level

• evolutionary adaptation to a biological niche

individual

• genetic tendencies

• dev environment

• learning and experience

• current situation including presence of learnt cues and senosry environment

modal action pattern

a sequence of movements shown by an individual that is repeated in largely invariate form. triggered by a ‘releaser stimulus’

more recently considered ore flexible complex sequences

• high probability of speciifc non random movements

• individuals can show variation in expression

action sequences

usually innate but can include learned components often highly motivated

usually components all relate to a single goal

what does learning allow

modification of innae genetically encoded behaviour

habituation

Habituation: response to a stimulus decreases with repeated exposure • Acts on innate unlearned responses to specific stimuli • Spontaneous recovery if stimulation withheld • Can be used to reduce fear

sensitisation

Sensitisation: response to a stimulus increases with repeated exposure • Short term effects • Indiscriminate • Likely to increase fear

classical conditioning

1. Classical conditioning (e.g. Pavlov’s dogs) Association formed between an event (good or bad) & a neutral but predictive cue → response to cue as if it were event

learning curve

Typically shows s-shape with slow start, fast learning with rapid increase in learned or conditioned response over a few sessions, followed by a more gradual increase until it reaches a plateau

associative

Association formed between an event (good or bad) & a neutral but predictive cue → response to cue as if it were event Animal’s behaviour has no effect on what happens (no control) Response can be emotion

operant or instrumental conditioning

Association formed between an event (discriminative stimulus / cue), a behavioural response (operant) and the outcome (reinforcer / punisher) Behaviour dictates outcome

strengthening or weakening the response

caution

Highly motivated behaviour can be resilient to some types of punishment Must be an alternative behavioural route to the animal’s “goal” Timing & intensity are critical – must be applied very quickly at sufficient strength to stop behaviour. BUT severe positive punishment can induce aggression and/or emotional conflict Learned helplessness – if required response unknown/punishment inconsistent/too severe/ inescapable

timeout

Time out Must be consistently and rapidly applied – a signal for undesirable behaviour can be used Repetition is important & time out must be short - <3 min Time out should be in an undesirable location (e.g. bathroom) NO reinforcement to be received during time out Correct behaviour requires reinforcement

what other factors affect learning

Motivation: • Learning occurs if animal is highly motivated for the reinforcer / to avoid the punisher • Related to the perceived reinforce/punisher value/impact ▪ This could be a feature of quantity or quality (type) • This may change with exposure ▪ For reinforcers the animal may become satiated ▪ For punishers, the animal may become habituated

what factors affectiveassociative learning

Timing is crucial (Contiguity):

• Requires a close temporal association between events (e.g. CS and US [classical] or behavioural response & reward [operant]) for learning to occur

Reliability of pairing/outcome is important in initial acquisition (contingency):

• Learn whichever CS has the highest probability of predicting the US (classical)

• Learn whichever response has the highest probability of achieving the desired outcome (operant) Intensity of conditioning or discriminative stimulus – (salience)

• Affected by familiarity of stimulus, what they have already learned and sensory predispositions

latent inhibition

blocking

competing motivations

Competing motivations • Learning about a new environment or novel stimuli may take precedence / distract from training • Frightened animals may be distracted & stress may interfere with memory formation (Mendl et al 1997) • Social environment may also distract animals • Sensory cues in the environment

species predispositions

Easier to condition certain, ‘more natural’ associations than others (e.g. food aversion with sickness – evolutionary advantage) Tendency to perform species-specific food acquiring behaviour in response to an opportunity to get food (e.g. Breland & Breland 1961) Species-specific responses to fear-eliciting stimulus may constrain training a new response e.g. freezing vs avoidance

associative learning processes

Generalisation • Transfer of learning from one context to another • Learned response to similar but different eliciting cue / event Discrimination • Selectively responding only to a specific cue when other similar cues are present

Extinction • Gradual weakening and ceasing of conditioned response when ▪ Conditioned stimulus no longer paired with the unconditioned (classical conditioning) ▪ Reinforcement of a behaviour stops (operant conditioning) • NOT forgetting as information is retained and can spontaneously reoccur • Behaviour may be resistant to extinction if original conditioning very strong (e.g. long period of conditioning, intense CS, highly motivated salient reinforcer etc)