History of animal behaviour

What did Darwin do?

Anecdotal study.

Evolutionary change will act provided organisms exhibit

• Variation

• Heredity

• Differential reproduction

  The expression of emotions in man and animal (1872)

What is Lloyd Morgan’s canon?

Specialised form of Occam’s razor/ law of parsimony.

• Not interpreting animal activity in psychological way of higher psychological processes - but interpreting it of processes standing lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development

Where did animal behaviour study develop, and through who?

North America/ Europe

• Niko Tinbergen (Oxford)

• Konrad Lorenz (Germany/Austria)

• Karl Von Frisch (Germany)

What is ethology?

The scientific and objective study of animal behaviour under natural conditions (scientific)

What is ethology focused on?

• Instinct

• Fixed action patterns (hard-wired)

Who was a black person and women contributing to a traditionally white and male history of animal behaviour?

Charles Henry Turner

• Pioneer in animal personality

Margaret Floy Washburn

• American, fish work etc

• Lab based

How was behaviourism born?

North America - focus on physiology and comparative lab based psychology

Ivan Pavlov - classical conditioning

What did Ivan pavlov’s discovery lead into?

Psychology

What was behaviourism rooted in?

Psychology

How was behaviourism rooted in psychology?

• Influence of external stimuli on behaviour

• Observable and quantifiable stimuli and response

  • Mind uneccesary

What was thorndikes puzzle box and skinners box?

• Thorndike, Cat in box can escape through latch. Is positively reinforced when escapes

• Skinner box - behaviour based on positive and negative reinforcement. Electric shocks and lights. Rat in box. Based on how environment shapes behaviour

why did behaviourism and ethology clash?

Differing approaches

• Behaviourist believed animals completely malleable

• Ethologists - focused on hardwired behaviour

Nature/nurture. Used to a be a big debate, exists more in population imagination now.

What are the differing approaches to studying behaviour that created the nature nurture debate?

Nature

• Ethology

• Evolutionary basis of behaviour

• Genetic constraints

• Instinctive, pre-programmed

Nurture

• Experience, environmental effects, learning, reinforcement

• Promoted by behaviourists

What is the different about environments when studying ethology versus behaviour?

Ethology - studying in natural environment

Behaviourists - lab setting

How were ethology studies originally appraoched

‘Sit’ and ‘Watch’ phase

What did Lorenz say about

What are ‘fixed patterns’ ‘released’ by?

Specific sign stimuli in environment

e.g. any object vaguely representing an egg gets a distinctive response

What did David Lacks robins do?

Ornothologists

• Robins territoriality

• Observed aggression and looked into trigger

  • Red colour of stuffed robins attacked viciously. Not when feathers are plain.

• Territory linked to reprod

What is the continuum of behaviours of nature to nurture?

(More genetic) Behaviour largely inherited → genetic predisposition and environmental triggers → Behaviour largely shaped by the environment (More environmental)

What helped to resolve the nature nurture debate?

Scientific study of birdsong in 50s

What can help determine where on the continuum the behaviour sits?

Behavioural genetics

• Twin studies

  • same genes, same/diff environments

  • e.g. MaTCH study. on average traits 49% hereditary. Meta

    • meta analysis >14.5M twin pairs.

• Adoption

  • Different genes

  • Same environments

  • Split-clutch experiments

What have been shifts in animal behaviour from 1970s to present?

• Focus switched from proximal to ultimate

• Formation of behavioural ecology

• Contemporary animal behaviour studies integrate mechanism and function

• Interdisciplinary