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Homepage

• Introduction
• Part I Introduction to the Senses (Exercises
  1-4)
• Exercise 1 The Tactile Sense
• Exercise 2 The Chemical Senses Smell/Olfaction
• Exercise 3 Visual Sense
• Exercise 4 Hearing is a Vibrational Sense
• Part II Introduction to Environmental
  Influences/Learning (Exercises 5-7)
• Exercise 5 Temperature Influences Call Rates
• Exercise 6 Animal Choice The T Maze
• Exercise 7 Caching Acorns A Memory Game
• Suggested Readings and Links

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Introduction

• This unit is all about behavior.
• Behavior involves actions by organisms in
  response to particular situations.
• The responses may be to internal stimuli or cues
  that are generated within the organism, itself,
  as in an empty stomach generates hunger
• An animal seeks food when it is hungry and a
  hungry plant seeks sunlight as this is its
  source of energy.
• Actions may be in response to external cues as
  well such as a response of a rabbit its detection
  of a predator.
• A rabbit freezes in place when it detects a
  predator, but runs in a zig-zag pattern from a
  predator that is pursuing it.

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• In order for an animal or any organism for that
  matter to respond to internal and external cues,
  it also must have the means to detect these cues.
  
• Organisms vary in the extent to which they
  utilize vision, hearing, smell and touch in
  detecting objects and events. The senses like
  actions are components of behavior.
• Finally, just as an organisms size, shape and
  color adapts it to the environment in which it
  lives, behavior is adaptive and it too is
  inherited or passed on from parent to offspring.
• All organisms exhibit behavior, even bacteria,
  though, of course, it is most important to
  animals that are able to move in complex ways.
  
• In this unit, you will learn the ways in which
  behavioral traits contribute to the success of
  individuals and the species they represent. Part
  I examines the various senses and Part II
  environmental influences and learning.

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Behavior

• Definition the actions or reactions of an
• organism in response to internal or
• external stimuli

• All Organisms possess morphological,physiological
  and behavioral traits.

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The Student Will

• Explore the different senses.
• Explore environmental effects on behavior and the
  mental capabilities of animals in solving
  environmental challenges

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Materials

• Unit 10 CD with calling frog pictured on label
• Wooden Box with pictures on each side and hole to
  reach in (Tactile Box)
• Box labeled 1b/1c Teacher containing extra
  Crayons, paper clips, rubber balls, metal balls,
  cotton balls, rubber bands, marbles, pennies,
  poker chips corks and tooth picks
• Clear Plastic Bag with White box sticker and
  labeled as Black Box Experiment containing
• 6 metal cans with clear lids (white dot), each
  containing a crayon, paper clip, rubber ball,
  metal ball, cotton ball, rubber band, marble,
  penny, poker chip, tooth pick and a cork
• 6 magnets
• Clear Plastic bag with Black Box Sticker and
  labeled as Black Box Experiment containing
• 6 flat tins with solid lid, black dot and labeled
  as do not open each containing 2 unknown items
  from list in white dot can

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• Cardboard box with nose sticker containing
• 14 painted jars, 6 blue and 6 red, 2 dark green
• blind fold
• Deely-bopper (headband with balls)
• Cardboard shoebox with flower sticker containing
• 2 flowers with tubes containing a few puff balls,
  bag of straws bag of extra puff balls
• 6 black boxes of 25 cards each with sad face, 3
  red boxes of 25 cards labeled Mimic 1 and 3 red
  boxes of 25 cards labeled Mimic 2
• Envelope containing 5 copies of Slap Snack Alarm
  Game Keys
• Envelope containing 5 copies of Slap Snack Mimic
  1 2 Game Keys
• Zipper bag containing 6 mazes in envelop sleeves
• Zipper bag containing 6 copies of acorn memory
  game
• Round mat
• 50 prominent colored chips
• 6 acorn chips of same color
• 4 marker chips (different color)

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Part I. The Senses

• Senses provide an animal access to external
  information and they also filter information from
  the external environment, determining what an
  animal tunes into and what it does not.
• We usually think in terms of the so-called five
  senses
• Taste, Touch, Hearing, Vision, Smell
• There are additional senses such as
• Magnetic field, Heat, Electric senses.
• There are also many variations on any particular
  kind of sense.
• Variability exists because sensory systems have
  developed for different functions.
• Thus, different organisms sense the world in
  different ways.

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Objective

• In the following exercises, have fun
  experimenting with your own sensory capabilities
  as well as experiencing the world from the
  viewpoint of animals that have different sensory
  capability

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Exercise 1 The Tactile Sense (Touch)

• While the other senses are limited to special
  organs in the body such as vision with eyes,
  hearing with ears, and smell with the nose, the
  sense of touch (tactile sense) is located all
  over the body just below the surface layer of
  skin in the dermis layer.
• Here thousands of sensory cells (nerve endings)
  detect pressure/weight, temperature, pain and
  other lesser stimuli.
• Locations that are more sensitive to external
  cues have concentrations of these nerve endings
• Fingertips,
• Lips
• Tongue
• Your sense of touch allows you to tell the
  difference between rough and smooth, soft and
  hard, and wet and dry, sticky and smooth etc.

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Objective

• Exercise 1 helps students determine how well
  their sense of touch works

Exercise 1.1. The Tactile Box (K-1)
Exercise 1.2. What is the Object in My Box?
Exercise 1.3. The Black Box Introduction to the
Scientific Method, Using Limited Senses
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Exercise 1.1. The Tactile Box (K-1)
State Standards Science

• Materials
• Wooden Box Cube with hole on side
• Touch Sense Chart shown below (teacher makes
  copies)

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1.1 Tactile Box Directions

• Divide the class into groups of 3 -4 students who
  will share one of the 6 tactile boxes available
  (frog on top)
• WARNING! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LOOK INSIDE THIS BOX!

• In this exercise, your sense of touch becomes
  your only guide.
• Your goal is to find each of five surfaces by
  using only your sense of touch and . . . . . . .
• One surface will feel rough or prickly.
• One surface will feel soft.
• One surface will feel smooth.
• One surface will feel sticky.
• One surface will feel bumpy.

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(Handout)

• To fill in this chart

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• The teacher will give each student a copy of the
  chart handout
• and the students should have crayons or other
  drawing tools
• available to them or provided stickers of the
  pictures
• displayed on the next slide (also available as a
  handout).

• Insert your hand into the box and attempt to feel
  the inside of the surface that has the hand
  printed on it.
• Now run your hand along it.
• How does it feel? Soft? Bumpy? Prickly? Sticky
  Smooth?
• Glue a sticker corresponding to the way this
  surface feels in the empty box next to the box
  containing the hand sticker.
• (For example, if it feels soft, the either draw a
  bunny or glue a bunny picture in the box).

• Share the box with other members of your group
  and see
• whether every one agrees with the feel you have
  chosen

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• In your chart draw or glue a picture of a

Bunny soft Knuckles bumpy
Porcupine prickly
Honey sticky
Butter smooth
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Handout stickers
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• Once everyone in your group has finished feeling
  the hand wall and filling in the blank box on
  their charts, give another student in the group
  first chance to feel the next surface (foot
  picture).
• Repeat this process until all empty boxes are
  filled.
• Check your results with other groups in your
  class.
• Finally, confirm your results by looking at the
  answer chart on the next slide.

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Time to check your answers Exercise 1.1
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Exercise 1.2. What is the Object in My Box?
State Standards Science

• Your teacher has a number of objects that can be
  found in the clear box marked Teacher (Black
  Box) Crayon, paper clip, rubber ball, metal
  ball, tooth pick, cotton ball, rubber band,
  marble, penny, poker chip and a cork.
• She/he will place a different object in each of
  the tactile boxes available to you.
• Put your hand through the hole and find the
  object. Without pulling out to look at it, feel
  it, hold it in your hand and make a guess as to
  what it is.

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• Now pull it out and look at it. Did you guess
  right?
• The teacher will replace the objects with new
  ones until the entire class has had a chance to
  complete the test.

• Your teacher can also hand you an item behind
  your
• back to do this exercise.

• Repeat the game, only this time your teacher will
  show you all of the possible objects that might
  be given to you before you feel the mystery
  object.
• Was this second version of the game easier for
  you? If so, why do you think that is true.

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Exercise 1.3. The Black Box Introduction to the
Scientific Method, Using Limited Senses
State Science Standards

• Scientific inquiry involves obtaining insight
  into something that is unknown to you.
• It is a stepwise process that involves
  observation, hypothesis formation and testing.
• The goal of this exercise is to rely on your
  senses in applying the scientific method to
  obtain as much information as you can about each
  of the two unknown objects that are in a
  solid-covered tin marked as 'Do not open'.
• To assist you in this endeavor, the metal
  container with transparent lid found with this
  unit has a series of objects from which the two
  mystery objects have been selected a toothpick,
  crayon, paper clip, rubber ball, metal ball,
  cotton ball, rubber band, marble, penny, poker
  chip and a cork.

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• ONE RULE NO PEAKING INTO THE BLACK BOX (solid
  tin cover) BEFORE you commit your results to
  paper or announce them to your class.
• Split into small groups (4or so) that will
  collaborate in this study.
• Find the two bags marked Black Box Experiment.
  Each groups of students should have in front of
  you a round tin with clear lid marked as 'White
  Box', a magnet and a flat tin with solid cover
  marked as 'Black Box'. This second container has
  a 'Do not open sticker' on it as well.
• Examine the series of objects forming the
  contents of the White Box, listing them on a
  sheet of paper or on the board so that you may
  consult the list as your investigation proceeds.
• Follow the chart shown (fig. 1) in pursuing the
  identity of each of the two objects in your black
  box.

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Fig. 1 Process to follow in determining which two
items are in the Black Box
'START HERE'
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• There are 2 routes you might take in solving this
  puzzle
• You might start by placing one known object at a
  time in the white box tin and recording its
  characteristics on a piece of paper.
• You could then hypothesize as to what
  characteristics you would sense for a particular
  object if it were in the black box, testing for
  and rejecting each item on the list.
• Alternatively
• You might first examine the black box tin for
  weight, sounds and other characteristics you
  might detect.
• Then you would hypothesize what two objects are
  in the box and what sounds, weights etc each
  conveys.
• You would test the known objects in the white box
  corresponding to your hypothesis, rejecting it if
  the characteristics do not match.

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• At the end, present
• a list of the characteristics that you have
  surmised for each of the two mystery items,
• your techniques for arriving at each
  characteristic, and
• your hypothesis as to what each object might be
  to your teacher for class discussion.
• Now open the black box and check to see if you
  were correct.

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Exercise 2. The Chemical Senses Smell/Olfaction

• Almost all animals use the chemical senses, taste
  and smell, to some extent.
• The chemical sense involves the detection of
  molecules as each gives off a unique odor.
• Just as related frogs have similar songs,
  materials that are composed of similar molecules
  have similar smells and tastes.
• To aquatic and burrowing animals, the chemical
  sense is the prominent one.
• On the other hand, most birds have a very poor
  sense of smell rather, they rely on their keen
  eyesight.
• Our chemical sense is crude compared to that of
  man's best friend the dog. We can't deal with
  taste in our exercises, but the sense of smell,
  itself, has a wide variety of uses.

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• In social communication, individuals produce
  odors called pheromones that attract others to
  them. Individuals might also release chemical
  signals that tell others to stay away.
• For example, male wolves, foxes and dogs mark
  their territories with urine it repels other
  males.
• Some animals also release chemical signals when
  they are frightened and this warns other
  individuals to seek cover or run away.
• The following two exercises explore this sense
  using the human nose.

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Objective

• Exercise 2 allows students to use their nose to
  hypothesis what organism is linked to an odor.

Exercise 2.1 How good is your nose? (K-12)
Exercise 2.2 Find that Flower I (K-12)
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2.1 How good is your nose? (K-12)
State Science Standards

• How good is your nose? Not as good a your dog.
• That is for sure.
• In this exercise you will be exposed to a series
  of odors, and will be asked to identify them
  without seeing the source of the smell.
• The odors are present in two levels of
  difficulty coarse level discrimination and fine
  level discrimination.

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2.1a Coarse Level Discrimination

• The goal of this exercise is to identify the
  sources of different odors.
• Locate the cardboard shoebox with the nose
  sticker on it.
• Station each of the 6 bottles at different points
  in the room.
• Each student should number a sheet of paper from
  A1 to A6.
• As a student visits a station, he or she should
  write the name of the object that he/she thinks
  produced the odor on the line that corresponds to
  the (station number) on the lid of the jar at
  that station. DO NOT LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE
  JAR
• The teacher will poll the class for their
  decisions for each odor source.

Now, lets see how you did
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Time to check your answers Exercise 2.1a
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• A 1. Blue1 cinnamon A 2. Blue 2 fish
• A 3. Blue 3 pine A 4. Blue 4 fruit
• A 5. Blue 5 Coffee A 6. Blue 6 Licorice

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If you did not do so well, remember that humans
do not have a well-developed sense of smell.

• Repeat the above exercise after examining the
  pictures and object list available under Answers
  for Exercise 2.1a
• Did you do better choosing among odors than
  trying to decide what an odor was without having
  the list of potential odor sources beforehand?

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2.1b Fine Level Discrimination

• Find the 6 red jars.
• Follow the protocol used under 2.1a above to
  identify the type of fruit present in each jar.

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Time to check your answers Exercise 2.1b
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• Red 1. strawberry Red 2. peach
• Red 3. pear Red 4. banana
• Red 5. orange Red 6. lemon

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2.2 Find that Flower I (K-12)
State Science Standards

• Insects and flowers have a close tie to one
  another.
• Because flowers are stationary, many rely on
  insects for pollination insects carry pollen
  from the anther (male part) of one plant to the
  carpal (female part) of another, permitting the
  plants to produce fertile seeds.

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• In return, the plants produce nectar to attract
  and feed the
• insects that serve this delivery function for
  them.
• Insects have sensory organs to locate flowers,
  they have wings
• to get them to flowers that might be widely
  spaced, and they
• remember nectar rewards.
• Thus a given insect tends to focus on the same
  species of flower
• in a foraging bout, and this increases the
  chance that flowers
• will successfully produce seed sets.

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• It is actually very important to the plants that
  an insect visits only flowers of the same species
  when it is foraging from one plant to another or
  all that nectar and pollen the individual plants
  have produced would go to waste. Thus different
  insects are attracted to the characteristic odors
  particular plant types' produce.
• This exercise is a class activity that explores
  the flower selection process of three insect
  types a bee, a fly and a butterfly.

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Directions

• Within the cardboard shoebox with the nose
  sticker, find the three dark green bottles, a
  blindfold and a set of deely-boppers.
• The class should line up in two columns of
  individuals facing one another with sufficient
  space between the columns for an insect (member
  of the class) to walk through.
• Find a volunteer to serve as a foraging bee.
  Place the deely-boppers on her/his head as well
  as the blindfold.
• Find the jar marked 'bee' and identify a student
  in one of the columns that will serve as the
  target flower. Be careful not to reveal where
  this target flower is to the blindfolded
  individual. The target will hold the jar at neck
  height in front.

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• The blind-folded insect is instructed to walk
  down the space between the 2 columns to find the
  target flower by the scent it emits.
• Recap the lid and place back in the nose box.
• Stop! Bee result discussed next

• Bees are attracted to what humans would call
  sweet or spicy scents. Because we can detect
  these scents and they register as pleasant to us,
  many perfumes are similar in scent to the flowers
  bees are attracted to. We refer to these perfumes
  as floral in nature as the person wearing one
  smells a bit like a florist shop
• Repeat the above steps with the fly scent.

Stop! Fly result discussed next
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• Flies unlike bees are attracted to odors that are
  not very pleasant to humans. As they lay their
  eggs (oviposit) on rotting flesh and dung, plants
  that emit similar odors attract them.
• Repeat the protocol for the butterfly jar.
• Stop! Fly result discussed next

• Butterflies and birds are not very olfactory.
  They are much more visual in behavior. Thus, your
  butterfly did not do very well in locating the
  target flower. That is, unless this particular
  student volunteer serving as a butterfly had an
  unusually acute sensitivity to the odor emitted
  by a cotton ball!

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Exercise 3. Visual Sense (Vision)

• Touch and smell provide important information to
  animals about their environments and the
  activities of other animals in them.
• However, these senses are limited to simple
  messages.
• In the more complex animals, two vibrational
  senses, sight and hearing, are utilized
  prominently in communication among individuals
  and both in detecting prey and avoiding
  predators.
• Most animals are sensitive to light in one manner
  or another.
• Vision involves the sensitivity of different
  organisms to vibrational energy within a narrow
  band of very short wavelengths.

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Objective

• In this series of exercises you will explore its
  function in foraging, in the avoidance of
  predation, and in social communication.

Exercise 3.1 Find that Flower II (3-12)
Exercise 3.2 Slap Snack Alarm (K-2) and
Slap-Snack Mimic (3-12)
Exercise 3.3 Jumping Spider Dances
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Exercise 3.1 Find that Flower II (3-12)
State Science Standards
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• Under the sense of smell exercises you learned
  that some insects (e.g., bees and flies) locate
  flowers by the particular odors they give off to
  advertise their available nectar supplies.
• Bees also use the visual sense to locate nectar
  sources though they are not as restricted to
  vision as are the butterflies.

• The parts of a flower and its color have evolved
  to attract particular insects.
• For instance, there are few green flowers,
  because flowers need to present a target
  (bulls-eye) to potential pollinators.
• Different species are sensitive to different
  color patterns and many insects view the world
  through the ultraviolet wavelengths.
• The pictures on the next page show what we see
  versus what the bee sees through its ultraviolet
  filter.

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Objective

• The following competitive experiment will provide
  you with first hand experience on the extent to
  which flowers are designed to attract animal
  pollinators.

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Directions

• Find the cardboard shoebox with the flower on the
  lid.
• Locate four volunteers from the class.
• Designate two of these individuals as flower
  holders (flowers wave in the breeze).
• The tube behind each flower should have some
  nectar in it (a few red puff balls). (If these
  are missing, add a few from the packet in the bag
  holding the flowers.)
• The other two individuals will serve as insects.
  Each will place a straw in his or her mouth and
  should clasp right and left hands behind the back
  so they will not be tempted to use them.
• Assign one insect to a particular flower and the
  other to the remaining flower.

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• Each pair of flower and insect individuals should
  face one another such that the flower tube is
  visible to the rest of the class.
• At the count of three, each insect should attempt
  to get its beak (straw) down into the nectar tube
  of its flower as it waves in the breeze.
• The object is to drag some nectar (a puff ball)
  up the tube towards the flower head. No need to
  take the ball out of the tube just bring it up
  to flower head.
• The first insect to do this, WINS.
• Repeat with a few pairs of individuals.
• Was one flower more often associated with the
  winner? Why might that be?

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Time to check your answers Exercise 3.1
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• One of the flowers has a funnel that guides the
  insect's proboscis (straw) to the nectar source
  the other lacks the funnel.
• Most flowers have not only petals shaped in a
  funnel but also nectar guides, lines or color
  patterns that radiate out from the source of the
  nectar reward.
• The anthers will be located above the funnel or
  below the legs of the insect standing on the
  landing platform such that pollen will stick to
  the legs for transport to other flowers of the
  same species.
• See pictures on next slide.

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Exercise 3.2 Slap Snack Alarm (K-2) and
Slap-Snack Mimic (3-12)

• Unless an animal is at the top of its food chain,
  it faces the problem of predation where other
  animals prey/feed on it).
• Because of their small size, insects are a major
  prey source to mammals and birds and they have
  developed two mechanisms
• of avoiding predation.
• 1. Many plant feeding insects incorporate the
  noxious chemicals plants produce as defense
  mechanisms into their own tissues. This makes
  these insects taste bad and many are even
  poisonous to eat.
• 2. Other insects have developed venoms that are
  released from specialized hairs and stingers on
  their bodies or mouthparts. Anyone who has
  encountered the saddleback caterpillar or a
  yellow jacket wasp understands the repelling
  effect stings can have on a predator thinking
  about attacking a particular prey.

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• Both poisons and venoms are chemical defenses
  against predation.
• The value of the defense to a particular prey,
  however, is limited as it might be injured or
  swallowed by the attacking predator before the
  chemical defense is released.
• Thus insects and other animals that have chemical
  defenses also tend to be brightly colored.
• These prey are taking advantage of the fact that
  mammals and birds have the ability to learn
• 1. Through experience with a distasteful or
  stinging insect that is brightly colored a
  predator tends to avoid similarly colored
  organisms in the future.
• 2. Nearby mammals and birds may learn from
  watching another animals response to a noxious
  prey.
• The common colors used as warning or aposomatic
  colors are red as in a stop sign, yellow or a
  blend of the two, orange.

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• Just as red and yellow warning signs attract our
  attention when we are driving down the road and
  everyone recognizes a Tennessee fan in school
  colors, red, yellow and orange attract the
  attention of predators.
• A young bird or mammal may well eat one or two
  brightly colored insects, but it quickly learns
  to avoid insects that have red or orange or
  yellow patches as being bad.
• In the following exercises, you will be predators
  making decisions about what prey to eat.
• The wrinkle is that you will be competing with
  your classmates to obtain limited food as there
  is not enough to share.

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3.2a Slap Snack Alarm (K-12)
State Science Standards

• In this exercise, you pretend that you are hungry
  birds looking for something to eat.
• Say three of you are searching an area together
  as birds commonly do.

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Slap Snack Alarm continued

• As you encounter a potential prey item, you need
  to very quickly decide whether to attack it or
  not.
• If you are too slow in your response, the prey
  may escape or another bird might get it first.

The problem is that not all prey are good
prey. You have to be careful not to grab
something that will poison you or cause you pain
or even death.
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Directions

• Divide the class into groups of 4 students.
• Each group should have a deck of cards
• One student should serve as the dealer and the
  other three as birds.
• The dealer will turn one card over placing it in
  the center of the desktop. The first person to
  slap that card with his or her hand gets the prey
  item and moves it to his/her pile.
• If no bird attacks a given card, the dealer moves
  it to a no eat or discard pile next to the
  original deck.
• Continue the foraging bout by offering all cards
  in the deck one at a time for potential
  predation.
• At the end, each individual should check the prey
  in his/her pile for noxious (bad tasting) and
  venomous prey
• (frownie faces on key next slide)

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• Remove one good tasting prey type for every sad
  face prey item in your deck.
• The number you are left with is your food reward
  score.
• Which member of your group was the best
  forager---had the highest food reward score?
• Also, the larger the no eat pile is at the end of
  the game, the better your group is at being
  'smart' predators.
• Be sure to put all of the cards back in the box
  when you are finished and to return this box and
  the answer sheet packet to the wooden trunk.

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Exercise 3.2b. Slap Snack Mimic

• State Science Standards

• Because the majority of bad tasting and venomous
  insects are brightly colored and escape
  predation, other insects cheat by producing
  similar bright color patterns.

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Slap Snack Mimic continued

• This is called mimicry in which a species lacking
  chemical
• defenses mimics a model species present in the
  same habitat that
• has chemical defenses.

• The advantage to the mimic is that the predator
  may have previously experienced a capture attempt
  with the model species and has learned to avoid
  the type.
• In this second exercise, you will be foraging
  birds feeding that are competing for food.
• You will be required to make a quick decision as
  to whether an insect is palatable (tasty) or not
  (chemical defenses present).

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• The object is to receive the greatest foraging
  reward.
• You will receive 2 points for taking a prey that
  is neither a model or a mimic, and 5 pts for
  taking a mimic. However you will suffer (lose -10
  pts) for taking a model (chemically defended)
  prey item.
• Before starting
• 1. Examine some examples of models and mimics on
  the next few slides.
• 2. Examine the slide that distinguishes the
  hymenopterans (bees, ants and wasps) from other
  types of insects and even spiders that mimic
  them.

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OUCH!
ANT MODELS
VENEMOUS
- 10 Points
YUCK!
POISONOUS/ TASTES BAD
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VELVET ANT (MUTILID WASP) MODEL
OUCH!
VENEMOUS
- 10 Points
Beetle mimic
5 Points
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LYCID BEETLE MODELS
5 Points
YUCK!
POISONOUS/ TASTES BAD
- 10 Points
Moth mimics
5 Points
Beetle mimics
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OUCH!
VENEMOUS
- 10 Points
BEE MODELS
5 Points
Fly bee mimics
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WASP MODELs
OUCH!
VENEMOUS
- 10 Points
Fly wasp mimics
5 Points
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MODEL WASP
OUCH!
VENEMOUS
- 10 Points
5 Points
Fly wasp mimic
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WASP MODEL
OUCH!
VENEMOUS
- 10 Points
Moth wasp mimic
Fly wasp mimic
5 Points
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WASP MODEL
OUCH!
VENEMOUS
Beetle wasp mimcs
5 Points
- 10 Points
Spider wasp mimic
Moth wasp mimic
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wing covers
Beetle
Moth
Spider
Spider
Bug
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Directions

• Split into groups of 4 students sitting around a
  cleared desk.
• Examine
• the mimicry sheets that will be displayed at the
  front of the room and
• the figure that shows the traits that differ
  between the hymenoptera (bees, ants, wasps) and
  the other insect types and spiders that mimic
  them
• Assign one individual as a dealer. The others
  will be birds in the foraging group.
• The dealer should have a score sheet with the
  names of all birds on it.
• Take a deck either mimic 1 or 2 and note this on
  the score sheet.

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• The dealer will turn one card over placing it in
  the center of the desktop.
• The first person to slap that card with his or
  her hand, gets the prey item.
• The bird having captured a prey should check the
  score on the back of the card
• Place red rectangle sheet that came with card
  deck over oval patch to see fitness reward or
  penalty
• The dealer will write this score down under that
  individual's name on the group's foraging score
  sheet.

Possible scores for a particular prey are 2, 5
and -10 where 2 is the reward for taking a prey
that is not a mimic or a model, 5 is the reward
for taking a mimic, and -10 is the penalty for
taking a harmful or distasteful model prey.

• Make sure that all players in the group get to
  see the reward
• and prey item each individual receives at each
  catch so that they
• too can learn from the experience.

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• If no bird attacks a given card, the dealer moves
  it to a 'no eat' or discard pile next to the
  original deck.
• The dealer then continues the foraging bout by
  offering another card in the deck for potential
  predation until all cards have been offered.
• At the end, the dealer will add up all of the
  scores.
• The bird with the highest total score is the
  smartest and/swiftest predator in the group (has
  the highest fitness reward).

• You might have a playoff against other winners
  from the class.

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• Have a class discussion concerning the
  differences in outcomes between mimic decks 1 and
  2.

Stop! The answer is next.

• Mimicry works best only if the model is more
  abundant than the mimic (deck Mimic 1).
• If there are more mimics than models present
  (deck Mimic 2), the predators are more likely to
  encounter a tasteful mimic than a model and will
  keep this prey type in its diet.
• For a population of largely mimics, the predator
  gets away with taking prey that exhibit warning
  coloration.

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Exercise 3.3 Jumping Spider Dances
State Science Standards

• The two senses used in complex communication are
  vision and hearing. Vision is particularly
  important in male courtship of females.
• Species specific color patterns and the complex
  movements used to display them help prevent
  wasted matings between species.
• Thus biologists use courtship sequences to
  identify species relationships.
• Females also choose among courting males of the
  same species on the basis of the quality of
  displays they offer. Lizards, birds and fish are
  perhaps best known for these colorful courtship
  sequences.

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Lyrebird
Unicorn Tang
Mandarin
Mandarin Fish
Iguana
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• One would not expect spiders to have elaborate
  visual
• courtship sequences as they generally have very
  poor vision and
• thus are not very colorful.

• The exceptions can be found in members of the
  jumping spider family Salticidae.
• Males have bright color bands and patches on the
  body and legs that are displayed in elaborate
  dances.
• Dr. Wayne Maddison and his students have been
  examining species relationships within the genus
  Habronattus, in part through examination of male
  dances.
• In the two exercises offered here, you will use
  video clips of male jumping spiders to 1st
  develop an ethogram and then to compare ethograms
  between two species.

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• An ethogram is a quantitative description of the
  natural behavior of an animal species.
• We will limit the ethogram here to the behavior
  of males directed towards females---the dances
  they exhibit.

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Exercise 3.3.a Learn a Spider Dance (K-2)
Develop an Ethogram (3-12).

• Locate the Unit 10. CD or DVD with the Frog on
  it. Find Exercise 3.3 Jumping Spider Dances.
• Play each of the 8 dances through a couple of
  times and choose which one you would like to
  learn the dance/develop an ethogram for.
• The species are Habronattus americanus
  (american), H. tarsalis (foot) H. Tuberculatus
  (knobby), H. coecatus (lacking color), H.
  jucundus (merry), H. decorus (elegant), H.
  altanus (alta high altitude), and H.
  carolinensis (carolina). (Note that some of the
  dances are quite long and thus are split into 3
  clips in order from start to finish).
• Play the clip of the chosen species again
  counting the number of actions that occur in the
  dance.

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• Make a list of numbers on a sheet of paper
  corresponding to the total number of acts you
  counted in the dance. (Make a master list on the
  board.)
• Play the clip again concentrating on the 1st
  action seen. Each student should write a
  description of this action pattern under 1 on
  the list of numbers.
• Discuss the action among you and come up with a
  name that best describes it. Use this name
  whenever you see this action again during the
  course of the dance. This will eliminate the need
  to write down the description each time.
• Repeat these steps until all of the different
  actions have been defined and assigned a name.

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• Now view the sequence of events from beginning to
  end, writing down the actions in the order that
  they occur.

You may need to repeat the clip a number if times
to get all number slots filled.

• Once your list is complete, you can perform the
  dance and describe the behavior in terms of an
  ethogram.
• Are there repeated patterns, just as in the
  chorus of a song?
• Are some behavior patterns more frequent at the
  beginning of the sequence and replaced by others
  later etc.

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Exercise 3.3b. Comparing Ethograms.

• The goal of this exercise is to compare the
  dances exhibited by different species
• Identify species that are more closely related to
  one another based on the actions they perform.

90
Directions

• Assign each species to teams of 3-4 students.
• Each team will complete an ethogram for their
  species, which they will share with other groups.
• Using the set of ethograms, each team should then
  cluster species together in groups that have the
  most elements (action patterns) in common.
• Develop a branching diagram of your choosing that
  reflects the relationships among the different
  species.

Two Branching Patterns
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• Compare the species relationship tree you have
  developed to that developed for these same
  species using molecular sequence data.

Stop! Answer is next
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• Do species that are most closely related in
  their genetic make-up share more behavior
  patterns in common than more distantly related
  species?
• Are there qualitative (e.g., apples vs oranges)
  differences among the species (different behavior
  patterns).
• Perhaps the differences are merely quantitative
  ones (same behavior patterns but relative
  frequencies as in same behavior pattern
  emphasized in one species and not used much in
  another)?
• You can calculate act relative frequency by
  dividing the total number of acts of a given type
  (i), sum Ai, by the total number of acts observed
  in the sequence, sum An, and multiply this result
  by 100
• Rel Freq 100(SumAi/sum An)

93
Exercise 4. Hearing is a Vibrational Sense

• Many organisms have hair sensory cells
• that detect air or fluid movement.
• Terrestrial (land dwelling) vertebrates have
  these hair sensory cells concentrated in two
  ears, one on either side of the head.
• Thus, we say that vertebrates with ears 'hear'
  sounds.
• In the vertebrate ear, sound waves hitting the
  ear cause movement of the fluid in a chamber
  housing the sensory hair cells.
• The movement of the fluid causes the fine hairs
  to bend and receptors in each hair cell send this
  information on for processing.
• As it is difficult to see at night, nocturnal
  animals communicate mainly by sound and their
  sense of hearing is well developed.

Em picture
94
Objective

• Exercise 4 teaches students how different species
  uses their vibrational senses to hear and
  communicate with each other.

Exercise 4.1. Bat Echolocation (K-12)
Exercise 4.2 The vibration sense of spiders
Exercise 4.3. What kind of Frog is it? You can
tell from calls males make. (3-12)
Exercise 4.4. Frog call patterns put to paper
Reading Sonograms (6-12)
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4.1. Bat Echolocation
State Science Standards
96
Bat Echolocation continued

• Bats use high sound pitches
• that are at the upper limit of
• human hearing.

• They actually produce ultrasonic calls that they
  send out into the night air in search of flying
  insects.
• When these sound waves hit a flying object, the
  signal bounces back just as a ball you have
  thrown at a wall comes back towards you.
• Receptors in the bats ears are tuned to
  screening the ultrasonic playbacks to detect
  potential prey and repeated calling permits the
  foraging bat to locate these prey.

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Directions

• Choose an individual who will be the bat in this
  exercise. This person should put on the blindfold
  that can be found in the shoebox with the nose
  sticker on it.
• Five additional students should be selected as
  moths, the favored prey of bats.
• In a place free of furniture and other objects
  that our bat might trip on, the rest of the class
  should form a circle around the bat and moths.
• The goal of the exercise is for the bat to locate
  all of the moths by echolocation.

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• The bat does this by calling out 'BAT'.
• The moths must reply each time they hear the word
  bat by
• calling out 'MOTH'.
• The bat needs to move towards the call of the
  nearest moth.
• The moth is captured if the bat touches it with
  his/her hand.
• At this point, the moth has to exit the circle.
• You might time this exercise to see if some
  students are better than others in using
  echolocation.
• Be sure to place the blindfold back in the
  appropriate box at the end of this exercise.

99
Exercise 4.2 The vibration sense of spiders

• Like bats, spiders use the sense of hearing
  though the spiders located ears are on its legs
  the term vibrational sense is used rather than
  hearing that is restricted to animals with ears.

State Science Standards

• Some of the sensory hair cells are located in
  the joints of the legs where they detect cahnges
  in leg position.

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• As a spider sits on its web, an insect hitting
  the web causes the
• silk strands to move which in turn causes the
  spiders foot
• and leg to move.

• These sensory hairs in the leg joints are
  disturbed by the leg movement and send the
  vibratory information on for processing.
• As in bats, a spiders hair cells are tuned to
  particular vibration patterns.
• Information on the type and size of insect
  hitting the web is obtained through this sense.
• Most spiders can see no more than a couple of
  centimeters distant (there are 2.54 cm/1 inch).
  Thus, the vibration sense is its main sense.

101
Directions

• Divide the class into groups of 6 individuals.
  Each group should take a clear plastic box with
  the spider web sticker on it.
• One person in each group will be the spider and
  the other five, insects.
• First unwind the fishing lines wrapped around the
  wooden block in the box with the spider on it as
  the designated spider
• holds it.
• Each designated insects should then take one of
  the monofilament lines and move away from the
  spider.
• The spider will then position his/her free hand
  on the top of the wood block such that one finger
  is resting on each of the five lines, radiating
  out to the insects.

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• Place the blindfold over the eyes of the spider
• Check that each of the insects backs up until all
  lines are taut.
• The teacher or some selected student should tap
  one of the insects, who will pluck his/her
  thread.
• When the spider detects the pluck, it should pull
  on this line. Did the spider find the correct
  prey?
• Switch off with different individuals serving as
  spider and insects.

103
Exercise 4.3. What kind of Frog is it? You can
tell from calls males make. (3-12)
State Science Standards

• Animals use the vibration sense to detect prey
  and to avoid predators.
• They also communicate through the production of
  sounds and the processing of these sounds.
• Like birds, male frogs and toads sing to attract
  females to them.

104

• It is important to both sexes that they locate
  only individuals of the same type or species, so
  each species has a unique song or call.
• However, the calls of closely related species are
  more similar to one another than are other frog
  or toad calls.
• In Tennessee, we have three major groups of
  frogs
• the 'true' frogs,
• the 'toads',
• the 'tree' frogs (see figures on the next
  slides).
• In this exercise, you will learn the differences
  in calls among the three major frog groups and
  will then be asked to assign the calls that you
  hear to the correct group.

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107
Directions

• Take out a sheet of paper and make a list of
  numbers from 1-11.
• Find the CD for Unit 10 with the frog picture on
  it and open track 1 for the introduction to
  Exercise 4.3 What kind of frog is it?
• Follow your guide through the exercise.
• For each track, which presents the unknown, the
  guide will play the call again on the next track,
  telling you what animal produced it.
• You may also check your answers n the next slide.

Stop! Answers are next.
108
1. TRUE FROG ---- Pig Frog 2. TOAD ---- Southern
Toad 3. TREE FROG ---- Upland Chorus Frog 4. TREE
FROG ---- Southern Chorus Frog 5. TRUE FROG ----
Southern Leopard Frog 6. TOAD ---- Fowler's
Toad 7. TRUE FROG ---- Bull Frog 8, TREE FROG
---- Brimley's Chorus Frog 9. TOAD ---- American
Toad 10. TRUE FROG ---- Pickerel Frog 11. TREE
FROG ---- Mountain Chorus Frog
109
Exercise 4.4. Frog call patterns put to paper
Reading Sonograms (6-12)

• It is easy enough to listen to songs made by
  various frog and toad species and detect
  differences among them.
• Biologists, however, need to be able to measure
  the differences (quantify them) and determine the
  extent to which these calls vary.

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111

• We cannot simply take out a ruler and measure the
  differences in calls as we might do say with the
  length of a leg or the height on an individual.
• Nor can we take out a color chart and assign a
  color shade to it as we might do for eye or skin
  color.
• One of the most basic techniques biologists use
  to analyze non-visual traits is to present the
  information graphically, a form that can be
  measured visually.
• Sounds can be converted to sound spectrograms or
  sonograms in which they are laid out in two
  dimensions (time and frequency or pitch) as shown
  on the following graph of the chickadee's song.

112
Objective

• In this exercise, you will learn how to read
  sonograms. Your challenge in the end will be to
  identify the sonogram that belongs to each of the
  mystery calls made by various true frog, tree
  frog and toad species.

113

• Find the CD for Unit 10 with the frog picture on
  it and open track 4 for an introduction to
  Exercise 4.4 Frog Sonograms
• Follow along with the sonograms shown below as
  instructions are given to you under track 5.
• After you learn about the translation of songs
  into graphs, you will be able to place each call
  with its graphical representation.

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117
The Challenge

• The goal here is to place each of the following
  frog species (1-5) with the graphical
  representation of its call (drawings A-E) on the
  next slide.
• Listen to instructions for this exercise on track
  6
• Go to track 7 to listen to each frog and toad
  call.
• Calls to Match to sonograms
• Call 1 Mountain Chorus Frog
• Call 2 Southern Chorus Frog
• Call 3 American Toad
• Call 4 Bull Frog
• Call 5 Southern Leopard Toad

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119
Time to check your answers Exercise 4.4
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121
Part II. Environment and Learning

• Behavior like morphological traits such as size
  and coloration and physiological traits such as
  heart rate and the mechanics underlying sensory
  perception is inherited (passed on from parents
  to offspring through genes).
• Behavior differs from the other traits though in
  the extent to which it can be modified by
  environmental influences.
• Behavior shows a much higher level of plasticity
  or flexibility and this reflects learning and
  mental processing.
• Remember that when we refer to the environment of
  an animal, we mean both physical features such as
  temperature and wind, but also biotic features
  such as prey, predators and even other members of
  the same species.

122
Objective

• The exercises in this section of Unit 10 Behavior
  explore environmental effects on behavior and the
  mental capabilities of animals in solving
  environmental challenges.

Exercise 5. Temperature Influences Call Rates
Exercise 6. Animal Choice The T maze
Exercise 7. Caching acorns a memory game
123
Exercise 5. Temperature Influences Call Rates
(3-12)

• Ectotherms (ecto outside, therm temperature)
  such as toads and crickets do not have an
  internal mechanism of controlling their body
  temperatures.
• Thus the body temperature of a frog in the water
  is the same as that of the water and the body
  temperature of a cricket and a frog sitting near
  a pond are the same as air temperature.
• Male frogs and crickets use muscle actions to
  produce their calls.
• Because muscles work faster and more smoothly at
  warmer temperatures, one might expect that on
  cold nights, some aspect of the call such as its
  rate of repetition might be decreased over the
  pattern exhibited on warm nights.
• Where environments have this influence, females
  processing the male calls would either have to
  correct for air temperature (do the math) or
  their processing of the calls would have to be
  temperature-dependent as well.

124
Objective

• In this exercise you will calculate the effect
  temperature has on frog and cricket songs.
• 
  Science Math

State Standards
Exercise 5.1 Temperature and Frog Call Rates
Exercise 5.2 Temperature and Cricket Call Rates
125
Exercise 5.1. Temperature and Frog Call Rates
(3-12)

• Frogs produce sounds by forcing air through the
  larynx (the upper end of a windpipe that contains
  vocal chords).
• The air vibrates the vocal chords and a special
  vocal sac is blown up like a balloon to amplify
  the sound (make it louder).
• What instrument does this remind you of?

Stop! Answer next
A Scottish bagpipe
126
Directions

• Find out how temperature affects call songs by
  finding Exercise 5.1. on the Unit 10 Behavior CD
  (frog pictures) starting with an introduction on
  track 8
• You will need a piece of paper, a pencil and a
  ruler to complete this exercise.
• Listen to the instructions to the exercise on
  track 9.
• Complete the exercise presented on tracks 10-22.

127
Exercise 5.2. Temperature and Cricket Call Rates

• The male cricket song consists of a series of
  chirps.
• The chirp is produced by a process similar to
  that of a person playing a violin.
• The wing moves over a comb-like structure (bow
  over strings) that is positioned on a sound-box
  filled with air.
• The sound box amplifies the sound (makes it much
  louder).

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Directions

• You will need a piece of paper, a pencil and a
  ruler to complete this exercise.
• Find the Unit 10 Behavior CD with the calling
  frog pictured on it.
• Go to track 23 for introduction to temperature
  effects on calls.
• Go to track 24 to listen to a cricket call
• Play tracks 25 - 38 for the activities associated
  with Exercise 5.2. At the end, you will be able
  to tell air temperature from the number of chirps
  a cricket makes in its call in a 10 sec interval.

129
Exercise 6. Animal Choice The T maze
Science Math
State Standard

• When we mention the word maze, everyone thinks
  of the maze puzzles or perhaps the garden
  challenge you visited one day where you start at
  one end and try to find the exit at the other
  (see figures on next slides).

130
Animal Choice The T maze continued

• Animal behaviorists use these mazes to test the
  learning and memory capabilities of animals as
  well as for preferences.
• There will be a food reward at the end of a
  simple maze and mice, rats and other test
  subjects will be released many times in the maze
  to see if they make fewer wrong turns with
  successive tries as well as reach the reward more
  quickly.

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• The T-maze available to you in this exercise is
  commonly used in experiments to test for animal
  preferences. It is called a T-maze because it is
  shaped like a T with the animal starting at the
  base of the letter and making a choice with a
  left or right turn at the top arms.

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• What kinds of questions can you answer with a
  T-maze?
• Sidedness. Does the animal prefer to go to the
  left or to the right arm or does it visit arms in
  a particular pattern? Perhaps it goes to
  alternate arms on successive trials.
• Simple Learning. If you place a reward in one
  arm, how many trials will it take for the animal
  to go directly to the arm offering the reward?
• How many runs will it take for it to forget that
  a reward was offered only in a particular arm,
  once the reward has been removed.
• Finally, can you re-establish the preference by
  bringing the reward back. Will the animal learn
  more quickly this second time?

133

• Preference. The most common use of the T-maze is
  to check for preference, asking an animal to
  choose between two options.
• Suggested rewards for the maze you have are
• shade vs light,
• moist substrate vs dry
• odor vs none
• substrate color
• substrate texture
• food
• no food
• Consult figure (next slide) that describes the
  scientific method.
• Also, remember that testing one individual does
  not make a scientific study. You can pool the six
  animals tested in the class if every one is doing
  the same experiment, or each group of students
  could test multiple animals.

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135
Objective

• In this exercise you will be designing your own
  hypotheses and protocols that will test them.

136
Directions

• Find the zippered plastic bag marked as Exercise
  6. Take out the 6 mazes and assign 1 to every 4
  students.
• Note the size of the track. You will need to find
  test subjects that will be able to walk down this
  groove (e.g., sow, pill or potato bugs
  (crustaceans), ants, spiders, small beetles, meal
  worms, small crickets.)
• Wash the track with a paper towel with soapy
  water.
• Decide what question you want to ask.
• Obtain all necessary materials for completion of
  the trials.
• You will probably want to wash the track between
  each trial to ensure that odor trails left by the
  individual in one run do not influence its
  behavior in later runs.

137
Exercise 7. Caching acorns a memory game
Science Math
State Standards

• Animals frequently face the problem of feast and
  famine.

138
Caching acorns a memory game continued

• That is, there are periods when food is so
  abundant that individuals could not possibly eat
  more than a small fraction of what is available
  to them ('The Feast').
• And then there may be extended periods when food
  is scarce ('The Famine').
• Quite a few animals solve this problem by storing
  food items for future use. This behavior is
  called caching (pro-nounced cashing).
• Birds and squirrels are examples of animals that
  cache food.

139
Multiple seed caches 3 birds
Beaver single cache

• Sometimes there is a central cache that is, the
  animal stores all of its food in a single place.
• This is not a particularly good strategy,
  however, as competitors might find the location
  and steal the food reserves.
• Thus, individuals of most caching species have
  numerous caches, sometimes as many as a hundred,
  scattered throughout its home range.

140

• Problem 1. If the animal puts all food collected
  in the same place, other animals may find and
  steal the lot.
• Problem 2. If the animal puts the collected food
  in many different places, how does the animal
  find its food again?
• How do animals find their food caches again?
  Three tactics might be taken.
• 1. Episodic Memory. The animal memorizes where it
  has stashed the contents of each foraging bout it
  makes. It remembers the episode just as you might
  remember a particular birthday party.
• 2. Re-foraging the Home Range. No memory is
  involved in this tactic. The animal merely
  re-searches the entire home range when looking
  for a meal during periods of famine.
• 3. Rule-based Search. In utilizing this tactic,
  the individual follows certain rules in locating
  its caches. For instance, it might place food
  items only under rocks or on the west side of
  trees. In rule-based search, the animal only
  needs to remember the rule.

141
Directions

• This is a game for three or four (squirrels)
  students using the same foraging area (matt on
  desk).
• One squirrel is the individual who will cache
  acorns around its home range.
• The cheating squirrels will have a chance to find
  the caches and steal the acorns before the owner
  gets a chance to retrieve them.
• If all of the acorns are not found, then the
  trees in the wood