Animal Behavior

• What is behavior?   * Behavior     * Everything an animal does and how it does it       * Response to stimuli in its environment     * Innate       * Inherited, “instinctive”       * Automatic and consistent     * Learned       * Ability to learn is inherited, but the behavior develops during an animal’s lifetime       * Variable and flexible         * Change with experience and environment
• Why study behavior?   * Evolutionary perspective     * Part of phenotype     * Acted upon by natural selection
• What questions can we ask?   * Proximate causes     * Immediate stimulus and mechanism   * Ultimate causes     * Evolutionary significance     * How does behavior contribute to survival and reproduction       * Adaptive value
• Evolutionary Perspective   * Innate behaviors     * Automatic, fixed, “built-in”, no learning curve     * Despite different environments, all individuals exhibit the behavior   * Learned behaviors     * Modified by experience     * Variable     * Flexible with a complex and changing environment
• Innate Behaviors   * Fixed Action Patterns (FAP)     * Sequence of behaviors, essentially unchangeable and usually conducted to completion once started     * Sign stimulus       * The release that triggers a FAP
• Super normal Stimulus   * Responding more to a larger sign stimulus
• Innate: Directed Movements   * Taxis     * Change in direction     * Automatic movement toward (positive taxis) or away from (negative taxis) a stimulus       * Phototaxis       * Chemotaxis   * Kinesis     * Change in rate of movement in response to a stimulus
• Complex Innate Behaviors   * Migration     * “Migratory restlessness” seen in birds bred and raised in captivity     * Navigate by sun, stars, Earth magnetic fields
• Innate and Learning: Imprinting   * Learning to form social attachments at a specific critical period     * Both learning and innate components
• Critical Period   * Sensitive phrase for optimal imprinting     * Some behavior must be learned during a receptive time period
• Learned Behavior   * Associative learning     * Learning to associate a stimulus with a consequence       * Operant conditioning         * Trial and error learning         * Associate behavior with reward or punishment       * Classical conditioning         * Pavlovian conditioning

Connect reflex behavior to associated stimulus

• Associate a “neutral stimulus” with a “significant stimulus”
• Learning: Habituation   * Loss of response to stimulus     * “Cry wolf” effect     * Decrease in response to repeated occurrences of stimulus     * Enables animals to disregard unimportant stimuli
• Social Behaviors   * Interactions between individuals     * Develop as evolutionary adaptations     * Communication/language     * Agonistic behaviors       * Threatening and submissive rituals         * Symbolic, usually no harm done       * Ex: territorially, competitor aggression     * Dominance hierarchy       * A social ranking within a group         * Pecking order     * Cooperation       * Working together in coordination     * Altruistic behavior       * Reduced individual fitness but increases fitness of recipient       * Kin selection         * Increases survival of close relatives passes these genes on to the next generation     * Pheromones       * Chemical signal that stimulates a response from other individuals         * Alarm pheromones         * Sex pheromones
• Language   * Honey bee communication     * Dance to communicate location of food source     * Waggle dance   * Bird song     * Species identification and mating ritual     * Mixed learned and innate     * Critical learning period   * Insect song     * Mating ritual and song     * Innate     * Genetically controlled
• Colonial mammals   * Naked mole rats     * Underground colony     * Queen, breeding males, non-breeding workers     * Hairless, blind

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