Observing and Measuring Animal Behaviour – Lecture 2

Confirm you are in course BIOL 301 – Advanced Animal Behaviour
Upcoming tasks & grade weightings
- Field-trip safety register must be completed to enter zoo (essential; gatekeepers will block entry if missing)
- Print the zoo worksheet from Moodle before trip
- Lab 1 this afternoon
- Focus: zoo preparation + main project planning
- Finish and submit Project Plan (≈ 5 % of total grade)
- Form groups and develop research questions
- Bring today’s slides (digital or hard-copy); no lab coats needed—computer-based only
- Zoo trip tomorrow (another 5 % of grade)
- Tutorial next week on Parental Care (2 % of grade); email Krissy in advance if you must miss
Extra resources posted on Moodle
- Chapter 5 excerpt (observation & recording methods)
- Optional practice videos for focal & scan sampling

Learn to measure and observe animal behaviour systematically
Build and use an ethogram
Differentiate among sampling rules (who/when you watch) & recording rules (what you write)
Provide foundations for
- This afternoon’s lab
- Your main research project
- Test questions (theory + methods)

Structural description
- Purely morphological/kinematic: e.g. “animal raised its leg 45^{\circ}”
- Pros: assumption-free; Cons: huge data volume, may include irrelevant details
Consequential / functional description
- Focus on apparent purpose (feeding, mating, aggression…)
- Beware over-interpretation (e.g. “smiling” vs “teeth exposed”)
Spatial relationships
- Behaviour relative to landmarks or conspecifics: “moved 5 m north toward feeder”
Key principle: choose description style that best answers your research question while minimising untested assumptions

Definition: Systematic inventory of an animal’s behavioural repertoire, organised in tabular form
Typical columns
- Category (e.g. Feeding, Aggression, Maintenance)
- Behaviour name / code (3–4 letters recommended; avoid numbers)
- Precise description (avoid circularity; do not reuse behaviour name in description)
Consistency
- All observers must share identical definitions & codes to combine data reliably
- Example ambiguity: “Feeding” vs “Handling” vs “Begging” among capuchins
Example (giraffe weevil aggression)
- Behaviours grouped by escalating Stage 1 → Stage 3, then “Conflict Resolution”
- Codes: AP (approach), CON (contact) …
Video exercise: 5-min capuchin troop
- Students attempted free-write list; revealed difficulty & need for structure
- Observed behaviours: digging roots, pounding food on rock (tool use?), self- vs mutual grooming, head scans (peek-a-boo?), etc.

Conduct preliminary watching sessions
- Determine diel activity (diurnal/nocturnal), seasonal cycles, enclosure routines
- Verify focal behaviour actually occurs during scheduled observation window
Choose study animal wisely
- Avoid inactive, nocturnal, or seldom-visible species if question requires high activity data
Formulate a clear research question before data collection
- Narrow focus (e.g. “tool-assisted feeding” rather than “all behaviours”)
- Guides ethogram scope and choice of sampling/recording scheme

Duration
- Total time or \% of session spent in behaviour (e.g. “3 min fight”, “30 % preening”)
Frequency / count
- Suitable for short events: “chicken pecked 50 times·hr^{-1}”
Latency
- Delay from stimulus to behaviour: “30 s from prey impact to spider’s approach”
Intensity
- Ordinal or continuous scale of force/level (rare; subjective unless instrumented)

Events: instantaneous, discrete (flight take-off, peck)
States: sustained, measurable duration (sleep, grooming bout)
Some behaviours form a continuum—classify based on your observation resolution & question

Ad libitum
- Non-systematic “note everything” approach; useful for pilot work or rare events
- Bias toward conspicuous actions; no robust statistics
Focal-animal sampling
- Watch one marked individual continuously for set time
- Rich detail per subject; labour-intensive; risk of selection bias & re-sampling same individual
Scan sampling
- At fixed intervals, record what every visible animal is doing
- Efficient for large groups & states (vigilance, posture)
- Cannot obtain precise durations; misses brief events between scans
Behaviour sampling
- Track every occurrence of a specific behaviour in entire group
- Ideal for rare/critical actions (e.g. fights, flights)
- Challenging if many individuals; risk of missed events

Pop-quiz answers (reinforcing distinctions)

Continuous recording
- Start/stop times of every behaviour → exact durations, sequences, latencies, frequencies
- Gold standard but time-consuming; often requires video for later coding
Instantaneous / Time-sampling
- Divide session into equal intervals; record behaviour at the instant sample point occurs
- Yields proportion of time in each state; faster, less exhaustive; rare events under-represented
One–zero (interval) sampling
- For each interval, mark 1 if behaviour occurred at least once, 0 if never
- Allows multiple behaviours simultaneously but overestimates duration & frequency; seldom recommended

Pros & Cons summary

Continuous: precise, sequence data / labor-heavy, smaller sample size
Instantaneous: efficient, scalable / loses fine detail, biased toward long states
One–zero: easy multi-behaviour screen / minimal quantitative value, potential bias

Quiz answers

Most exact durations & frequencies → Continuous recording
Definition of instantaneous sampling → “Observation period split into regular time intervals; record what is occurring at each point.”

Observer influence
- Presence too close alters behaviour (cows stare at researcher; zoo animals react to tapping on glass)
- Mitigations: distance, hides, one-way glass, binoculars
Experimenter expectancy (Clever Hans effect)
- Subtle cues from handler/observer change animal actions
- Use blind/double-blind protocols; anonymise video filenames before coding
Observer drift
- Skill and criterion shift over time
- Conduct training sessions; use detailed ethogram; periodic reliability checks among observers
Observer fatigue
- Long bouts reduce accuracy; schedule breaks, rotate duties
Anthropomorphic mis-labelling
- Describe what you actually see, not inferred mental states (“head moved back & forth” vs “playing peek-a-boo”)
- Remember animals perceive differently (insect UV flower view vs human yellow)

Systematic observation respects animal welfare by reducing intrusive presence
Accurate ethograms essential for welfare audits, captive enrichment design, conservation behaviour studies
Rigorous methodology prevents anthropocentric errors, supports reproducibility & cross-study comparability