Animal Behavior
Essential Questions:
How do have animals evolved to respond to
their various environments?
What is the different between innate and
learned behaviors?
What makes humans unique among animals?
Your Turn!
What is Animal Behavior?
• What do you think of when given the
question of “What is Animal Behavior?”
• Draw or sketch what you think in the box
on your notes.
• Pull on your own experience (especially if
you have a pet) or through observations of
animals.
• We’ll come back to this and keep this in
mind when we finish the notes today.
How do Animals React to their
Environment?
• Behavior – anything an animal
does in response to its
environment.
• The way an organism reacts to
changes in its internal conditions
or external environment.
• Behaviors can have an adaptive
value and are shaped by natural
selection.
– Offspring will inherit the genetic basis
for the successful behavior.
– Those without the behavior will die or
fail to reproduce.
– Can you think of situations in which a
certain type of behavior would be
advantageous for a certain species?
• Hint: Think about symbiotic relationships!
Stimulus and Response
• Stimulus: any kind of
signal that carries
information and can be
detected.
– Light, Sound, Odors,
Heat
– Received by senses:
Sight, smell, touch,
sound, taste
• Response: a specific
reaction to a stimulus
– Reactions include
nervous system, sense
organs, and muscles
When it is cold (stimulus) outside, what does your body do? (Response?)
When it is hot (stimulus) outside, what does your body do? (Response?)
When you are startled (stimulus), what does your body do? (Response?)
Innate Behavior - Automatic
• Innate behavior is inherited from birth.
• Fully functional the first time, even
without previous experience.
– Sometimes called “Inborn behavior”
• Include Automatic responses.
• Types of Automatic responses:
– Reflexes: contains no conscious control
•
•
•
•
Newborn babies and their grasp reflex.
Getting hit on the knee causes it to “kick.”
Someone snaps in your eyes and you blink.
You touch/pick up a hot object and release it.
– Fight-or-Flight: mobilizes the body for
greater activity.
•
•
•
•
Increased heart activity
Adrenaline secreted (tingly feeling)
Respiration increases (heavy breathing)
Skin gets cold, clammy
• How would these types of behaviors be
evolutionarily advantageous?
Your Turn!
Innate Behavior - Instincts
• An instinct is a complex pattern of
innate behaviors.
– Therefore, take a longer time.
– Several parts and take weeks to
complete.
– Begins when an animal recognizes a
stimulus and continues until all
parts of the behavior have been
performed.
• Include:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Suckling
Taxis (Movement away from stimuli)
Aggressive behavior
Hibernation (in winter)
Estivation (in summer)
Migration
Circadian rhythm
Your Turn!
Your Turn!
Explanation of Innate Behavior
• Migration: the instinctive, seasonal movement of
animals to take advantage of more favorable
environmental climates.
• Circadian rhythms: a 24-hour cycle of behavior,
plants also follow this pattern.
• Suckling: in mammals, it is the drawing of milk into
the mouth from the nipple or teat of a mammary
gland (i.e., breast or udder).
– In human beings suckling is also referred to as nursing, or
breast-feeding.
– Suckling is the method by which newborn mammals are
nourished.
Your Turn!
Circadian Rhythms
John Palmer’s
study on the diurnal
pattern of
copulation in
humans
Your Turn!
Innate Behaviors (Continued)
• Hibernation – allows animals to conserve energy during the winter when
food is short. During hibernation, animals drastically lower their metabolism
so as to use energy reserves stored as body fat at a slower rate.
– lower body temperature
– slower breathing
– lower metabolic rate
• Estivation – rare state of dormancy similar to hibernation, but during the
months of the summer.
–
–
–
–
against heat to avoid the potentially harmful effects of the season.
conserve water and food.
avoid predators.
avoid competition with other species.
• Taxis - an innate behavioral response by an organism to a directional
stimulus. A very primitive form of stimulus and response.
– A taxis differs from a tropism (turning response, often growth towards or away
from a stimulus) in that the organism can move easily and demonstrates guided
movement towards or away from the stimulus.
– Example: Worms move away from the sunlight and towards the dark.
Learned Behavior
• Behavior changes through
practice and/or experience.
• Learned behavior: acquired
behaviors, develop over time.
• These behaviors were seen
as advantageous to prevent
an organism from responding
to repeat stimuli and/or getting
killed/harmed.
• Includes:
–
–
–
–
–
Habituation
Conditioning
Trial and Error (operant)
Insight
Imprinting
• (mix of instinct and Learning)
Your Turn!
Habituation
• Habituation: an animal
decreases or stops its
response to a harmless
repetitive signal.
• Why? Allows the animal
more time to be efficient
and not waste energy
worrying about a nonharmful stimuli.
• That is, if it’s not harmful,
don’t worry about it.
– Example: Wearing a
watch!
Classical Conditioning
• Classical conditioning: forming a mental
connection between a stimulus and a
reward/punishment.
• Example: Pavlov’s dogs
Trial & Error
• Also called Operant conditioning: an
animal learns to behave in a certain way
through repeated practice.
• Example: a rat learning its way in a maze.
Insight Learning
• Insight learning: learning in which an animal uses
previous experience to respond to a new situation,
common in primates. Humans excel at this.
These monkeys
• Example: Solving math problems
stack boxes to
reach a food prize.
Silly dog, No insight learning.
Now that’s using your noodle!
Your Turn!
Group Behavior
• Social behavior: Helping
close relatives survive
(with shared genes) helps
to ensure to pass those
genes onto successful
(living) offspring.
Social Behavior:
Communication
• Communication within
social structure…
– Language : vocalizations to communicate with
others in the social group. (calls, vibrations, words,
etc)
• Example: Meer cats, Rabbits, Humans
– Pheromones: a chemical that triggers a natural
behavioral response in another member of the
same species.
• There are alarm pheromones, food trail pheromones, sex
pheromones, and many others that affect specific
behavior.
• Example: Bees and Ants
Social Behavior: Courtship
• Courtship: behavior that males and
females of a species carry out before
mating.
• Helps identify fit or healthy mates of the
same species to ensure healthy offspring.
– Dances - Gifts
- Songs/Calls
-Displays
Your Turn!
Social Behavior:
Maintaining the Social Hierarchy
• Territory: a geographical area defended by an animal
against others of the same species. Often to defend a
harem (or supply of mating females.)
– Example: Male cats urinate on or scent their territorial boundaries.
• Aggression: behavior used to intimidate another
animal of the same species in order to defend young,
territory, (possibly a female(s)), or food supply.
– Marked by growling, bearing teeth, fronting or other vicious displays.
• Dominance Hierarchy: social ranking within a group
where some individuals rank lower than others;
usually has one alpha or top-ranking individual.
– The Alpha has exclusive breeding rights and privilege whereas the
Omega has little to none.
– Example: Pecking Order, Pack Behavior, dominant male
Your Turn!
Your Turn!
Altruistic Behavior:
Indirect Selection
• Best explained by a “kin” theory, animals try to
maintain the survival of others who share their
genes.
– Proposed by William Hamilton.
• Genes associated with caring for relatives may be
favored by selection.
• Altruists pass on genes indirectly, by helping
relatives who have copies of those genes to survive
and reproduce.
Reciprocal altruism
• Some animals behave
altruistically toward others who
are not relatives.
– Example: A wolf may offer food to
another wolf even though they share
no kinship.
• Such behavior can be adaptive if
the aided individual returns the
favor in the future.
• This sort of exchange of aid is
called reciprocal altruism.
• Commonly used to explain
altruism in human behavior.
Reflect on
Your Learning
• Go back to your
original thought about
animal behavior.
– What type of behavior
did you think of?
– What is it called?
Share with the class
your findings!