Innate vs. Learned Behaviors
 http://www.sparknotes.
com/biology/animalbeh
avior/learning/problem
s_1.html
What is Behavior?
 An activity or action that helps an organism survive
in its environment.
 Behavior can be thought of as the way an animal
acts.
 Blinking, eating, running, walking, flying, sleeping are all examples of animal behavior.
Animals behave in certain ways
for four basic reasons
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to find food
to interact in social groups
to avoid predators
to reproduce
Stimulus
 A behavior comes in response to a
stimulus.
 A stimulus is any change in the
environment that affects the activity of an
organism or what causes an animal to act in
a certain way.
Examples of Stimuli
Stimuli may include:
• the sight of food
• the sound of a potential predator
• the smell of a mate
• daily events such as nightfall
• seasonal events such as decreasing
temperatures.
Releasing Stimulus
 Triggers the Organisms Nervous System to
do a behavior
Innate Behaviors
 Innate behaviors are not learned, you are born
with them.
 Fully functional the first time they are performed
 No experience needed to acquire behavior
 Inherited: Genes determine behavior
Examples of
Innate Behaviors
1. Fish
2. Chickens
3. Lovebirds
4. Mammals
Ability to swim
Pecking
Nest Building
Suckling to get milk
Egg Rejection
Egg Rejection by Cukoos is an innate
behavior.
 Brood Parasites:
 birds which never build
their own nests and instead
lays their eggs in the nest
of another species
 leave those parents to
care for its young.
http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=JMkpdsud-F4
Migration
 Migration is an innate behavior.
 Migration is the seasonal movement of
animals from one place to another.
 This behavior allows the animals to take
advantage of resources like food or water
when they run low in another location.
Hibernation
 Hibernation is an innate behavior.
 Hibernation is a resting state that helps
animals survive the winter.
 During hibernation a warm-blooded animal
like a ground squirrel slows down its heart
rate and breathing rate.
Fixed Action Pattern
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An innate pattern of behavior
Immerged at birth
In tacked first time its done
Performance and maturation can shape it /
improve it further
 Always runs to completion
Examples of FAP’s
1. A squirrel opening a nut
2. Rhesus Monkeys and
Subordinate Gestures
Example of Human FAP’s
1. Smile, Frown, etc.
2. Yawning
3. Eye blinking
Learned Behaviors
 Behaviors animals are NOT born with
 Acquired / Modified by experience
 Behaviors are learned from observations
and experience
 Often learned from parents
Types of Learned Behavior
 Non-Associative Learning
 Habituation
 Sensitization
 Associative Learning
 Classical Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning (Trial and Error)
 Latent Learning
 Imprinting
 Insight (Reasoning)
Non-Associative Leaning
 Organisms change their response to a
stimuli without association with a positive or
negative reinforcement.
 2 Types:
1. Habituation
2. Sensitization
Habituation
 A decrease in response to a stimulus after
repeat exposure
 Less sensitive to stimuli
 Eliminates responses that have no value on
an animals survival or welfare.
 Helps prevent waste of energy
Example of Habituation
 Prairie dogs and humans
 A bird and a stuffed cat
 Snail and tapping
Sensitization
 The increase that occurs in an organism’s
responsiveness to stimuli following an especially
intense or irritating stimulus.
 More sensitive to stimuli
 Depending on the intensity and duration of the
original stimulus, the period of increased
responsiveness can last from several seconds to
several days.
Example of Sensitization
 Sea snail that receives a strong electric
shock
 Will afterward withdraw its gill more strongly
than usual in response to a simple touch.
Associative Learning
 Organisms change their response to a stimuli with
association of a positive or negative
reinforcement.
 2 Types:
1. Classical Conditioning
2. Operant Conditioning
Classical Conditioning
 Experiment by Ivan Pavlov
 Pavlov began to observe salivation in dogs
1. He would enter the room and place
meat powder or a food morsel on
tongue and wait for salivation to occur
2. He began to see that the dogs were
salivating as soon as he entered the room,
which was before any food was even in
sight.
3. The dogs became conditioned by Pavlov to have
expectations. When he entered the room, the dogs
expected food; therefore, they began salivating in
expectation
Neutral Stimulus
 A neutral stimulus is something that normally would not
produce any salivation
 Pavlov chose to ring a bell since ringing a bell would not
normally produce salivation in the dogs.
 Pavlov began ringing a bell before placing the meat
powder or item on the dog's tongue
 Each and every time that the bell was rung, meat powder
or food was given to the dog.
 Pavlov repeated these experiments many, many times.
 Eventually, the bell alone was enough to make the dogs
salivate.
 This proved that a neutral stimulus that elicited no
response whatsoever from the dogs before was now
causing a response- salivation.
 The dog had learned to associate the sound of the bell with food.
Classical Conditioning in
Summary
Unconditioned Stimulus
 Stimulus that leads to a response with NO
training
 Ex. Food
Conditioned Stimulus
 A former neutral stimulus that comes to elicit
a given response after pairing with an
unconditioned stimulus.
 Ex. Bell
Unconditioned Response
 Automatic Response to an unconditioned
stimulus.
 Ex. Salivate
Conditioned Response
 A learned response to a conditioned
stimulus.
 Ex. Salivate
What did this prove?
 Pavlov's experiment proved that all animals
could be trained or conditioned to expect a
consequence on the results of previous
experience.
Operant Conditioning
 an unassociated behavior becomes
associated with a reward
 B.F. Skinner designed an apparatus called a
"Skinner box" to test the interaction between
UCS and CS
Skinner Box
 A rat was placed inside the Skinner box
 If the rat pressed down a lever inside the box then
the box would release a food pellet
 Soon, the rat pressed the lever far more often than
he would just by chance.
 But with each instance of lever pressing, the
operant is reinforced by reward with food.
 The rat learns that pressing the lever is associated
with food, and so he will increasingly press it.
Training Rats in a Skinner Box
Classical vs. Operant
 In classical conditioning, the animal receives
no benefit from associating the CS with the
UCS.
Latent Learning
 When an organism learns something in its
life, but the knowledge is not immediately
expressed.
 Knowledge remains dormant until certain
circumstances allow or require it to be
expressed
 Learning WITHOUT REWARDS!
 No association with a positive or negative
stimulus.
Example of Latent Learning
 Place a rat in a maze with no food
 The rat will simply run around the maze,
familiarizing itself with the surroundings.
 If you then return the rat to the same maze the
next day and add food, the rat will find the food
much more quickly then will a rat placed in the
maze with food for the first time.
Imprinting
 Process by which a social attachment to a
particular object is formed during a critical
time period.
 Critical Time Period: Prior to birth to
somewhere around 30 hr old
 Early in life when recognition is critical
 Irreversible
 Work done by Konrad Lorenz
Insight Learning
 Type of learning or problem solving that
happens all-of-a-sudden.
 Prior experience is crucial to learning
 Investigations are difficult because the
learning happens quickly
 Identified by Wolfgang Kohler
Example of Insight Learning
 Köhler placed a banana outside the cage of a
hungry chimpanzee, Sultan, and gave the animal
two sticks, each too short for pulling in the food but
joinable to make a single stick of sufficient length.
 Sultan tried unsuccessfully to use each stick
 Later, after apparently having given up, Sultan
accidentally joined the sticks, observed the result,
and immediately ran with the longer tool to retrieve
the banana.