Decoding Life: Animal Behavior

Animal Behavior/ethiology

looks at an organisms activities in response to stimuli

Innate behavior

behavior that is developmentally fixed such that all individuals in a population exhibit the same response to a stimulus. INSTINCTIVE, HARD WIRED. Stimulus to this behavior is called a releaser.

Learned Behavior

Behavior that is acquired, altered or eliminated due to an animals experience

Characteristics of Innate Behaviors

• Fixed Action Patterns

• Biological Clocks or Rhytthms

• Communications between animals

• Movement

Fixed Action Patterns

A sequence of behaviors that does NOT change when initiated by a stimulus or releaser, and is always completed the same way. The more prominent the stimulus, the greater the response.

Biological clocks or Rthythms

Circadiam rhythms —> daily 24 hour cycles + biological clocks that influence behavior

Circannual rhythms —> influence yearly cycles of behavior such as migration

Communication between animals

A stimulus transmitted frokm one animal to another will elicit a specific response.Can also be in the form of chemical, tactile and visual stimuli but can ALSO BE LEANED.

Pheromones —> produced by one organism, and when released have an effect on the behavior of other organisms of the same species. (chemical stimuli)

Movement

Kinesis - a change in activity or non directional behavior by an animal in response to a stimulus. Fast movement usually indicates a search for a comfort zone, slow movement indicates that it has found it.

Taxis - a directed movemebt by animals either towards or away from a stimulus.

Characteristics of Leaned Behaviors

1.) Imprinting 2.) Spatial Learning 3.) Associative Learning 4.) Cognition 5.) social learning

Imprinting

innate behavior that will dxevelop when an organism is exposed to a stimlus within a critical or sensitive period of time- as such, it does require some level or genetic input ot innate ability to imprint or be programmed into the stimulus.

Spatial learning

the establishment of a memory thet reflects the organisms environment by forming a cognitive map

Associative learning

the learned ability to associate one environmental feature yo another

Special cases:
Habituation - the loss of a response to an unimportant stimuli

Classical conditioning - responding to a new subsitute stimulus as if it were the original stimulus

operant conditioning - learning by trial and error

Cognition

proccess of knwoing that involves awareness, reasoning, recollection, judgement

Social learning

learning by observing other animals

Altruism and Kin selection

behavior that reduces an animals individual fitness but increases the fitness of other indiviudals in the immediate family/populayopm

Agonistic behavior

behavior that involves a contest of some kind, determining (ex. which individual will get access to foods or mates.)

Dominance hierarchy

organization of social animals in which more dominaant animals control fewer dominant individuals —> recudes amount of intensity of fighting.maintained by agonistic behavior normally.

Teritorialityu

Individuals establish choice living space, ghiving them access to critical resources such as food and water

Optimal foraging

Optimal foraging minimized the energy cost of obtaining food while maximizing the benfits of gaining the food energy