Animal Behavior

1
Animal Behavior

• Ch. 51.1-2 40.2

2

• Ethology the study of behavior
• How is this happening?
• Proximate causation-how a behavior occurs
• Genetic basis, physiologic, innate response to a
  stimulus
• Why is this happening?
• Ultimate causation- why a behavior occurs
• Finding food, regulating temperature,
  courtship/mating, communication

3

• What is behavior?
• an action carried out by muscles under control of
  the nervous system in response to a stimulus
  (based on physiological systems and processes)
• everything an organism does and how it does it,
  response to stimuli in the environment
• essential for survival and reproduction and
  subject to natural selection
• purpose may include communication with other
  organisms
• examples songbirds, courtship, scent marking,
  hunting, maintain homeostasis, migration etc.

4

• Behavioral stimuli may be..
• Environmental
• Hormonal
• sign (color, object, another organism)
• Scent
• circadian rhythms (daily behavior cycles
  triggered by light and dark)
• physiologic (internal)

5
Animal Communication

• signal stimulus from one organism to another
• communication reception of signals
• may be visual, chemical, tactile, auditory,
  pheremones
• communication/behaviors are closely related to an
  organisms lifestyle and environment (will
  determine the type of communication used)

6

• Innate behaviors
• all individuals in a population exhibit the same
  behavior despite environment/lifestyle
  differences
• automatic, fixed, built in response
• triggered by a stimulus
• example migration, hibernation
• Learned behaviors
• modification of a behavior based on experiences
• triggered by a stimulus but variable
• social learning- learning through observing
  others
• associative learning-associate one environmental
  feature with another
• classical conditioning (stimulus associated with
  outcomepositive/negative reinforcement)
• Pavlovs dogs
• operant conditioning (trial and error learning)
• Push lever to get food (mice)
• example tool usage, hunting techniques

7

• Homeostasis-maintaining internal balance
• organisms behavior will change in an effort to
  maintain balance either internally or with the
  environment
• negative feedback reduces the stimulus
  (returning to a normal state)
• temperature regulation, insulin/glucose balance
  in blood
• positive feedback amplifies the stimulus (takes
  farther from normal state)
• labor/birth
• carbon emissions and global warming

8

• Taxis change in direction, move away from
  (negative) or toward (positive) a stimulus
  (directional)
• Chemotaxis (chemical)
• Phototaxis (light)
• Kinesis change in rate of movement in response
  to a stimulus (non-directional)
• Like stimulus (move slowly)
• Dislike stimulusagitated (move quickly)
• Social Behaviors interactions between
  individuals (evolutionary adaptations)
• language, dominance, altruism, cooperation,
  imprinting
• Habituation loss of response to stimulus

9
Videos

• Birds of Paradise https//www.youtube.com/watch?v
  W7QZnwKqopo
• Honey Bees https//www.youtube.com/watch?vnga4Z_H
  RUsU
• Sage Grouse https//www.youtube.com/watch?vm0M8pZ
  nNlnI
• Monkeys and tool usage (life series)