You need your Animal Behavior Web Quest!
Is the study of animal behavior with special attention to the natural environment and physiological, evolutionary aspects.
AKA the study of animal behavior in their natural surroundings
◦ Knowledge of animal behavior is essential to understanding the whole animal and its ability to adapt to various situations.
Video
The actions or reactions of a person or animal in response to external or internal stimuli.
AKA is the way an organisms interacts with other organisms in its environment.
◦ Animals are different from one another in their behavior. They are born with certain behaviors, and they learn others.
Your dog barks and wags its tail as you scratch behind its ears. Sitting at your feet, it watches every move you make.
Why do dogs do these things? In nature, dogs are pack animals that generally follow a leader. They have been living with people for about 12,000 years. Domesticated dogs treat people as part of their own pack.
Behavior
is very broadly defined as the way an animal acts. Any action an animal does, or any response to a stimulus is a behavior.
Blinking, eating, walking, running, and flying all are examples of behaviors.
Stimulus
Any change in an organism’s environment that causes the organism to react. “cause”
AKA anything in the environment that causes a reaction.
Stimulus (singular) Stimuli (plural)
Response
How the organism reacts to a stimulus and results in a change in behavior. “effect”
AKA a reaction to a change in their environment.
A rabbit gets scared so it runs away.
You are cold so you put on a jacket.
A dog is hot so it lies in the shade.
It starts raining so you take out an umbrella.
You are hungry so you eat some food.
You walk in and your dog starts to bark and wag his tail.
Getting a drink when you are thirsty.
The snake moved into the sun because it was cold.
External stimuli: a stimulus that comes from outside an organism
Examples:
Changes in: amount of daylight, temperature, sound, amount of water, space, types of food
Internal stimuli: a stimulus that comes from inside an organism
◦
Example:
Hunger, Thirst, and Feeling Sleepy
A cat feels thirsty so it drinks water.
A snake lunges at a rabbit so it runs away.
A dog get hot because the temp rises so it goes to lay in the shade.
It starts raining so you take out an umbrella.
You are hungry so you eat some food.
You see a DQ commercial for a blizzard so you decide to go buy one.
A behavior that a organism is born with.
◦ These types of behaviors are inherited.
◦ They don’t have to be learned.
Innate behavior patterns occur the first time an animal responds to a particular internal or external stimulus.
Behavior of animals that have short life spans is mostly innate behavior.
Most insects do not learn from parents because most parents have died or moved on.
Yet every insect reacts innately to it environment.
A moth will fly toward light, and a cockroach will run away from it. They don’t learn this behavior. Innate behavior allows animals to respond instantly.
This quick response often means the difference between life and death.
Reflexes: simplest innate behavior, an automatic response that does not involve a message from the brain.
Examples: blinking, shivering, yawning, sneezing, etc.
A complex pattern of innate behavior. Unlike reflexes, instinctive behaviors can take up to two weeks to complete.
Instinctive behavior begins when the animal recognizes a stimulus and continues until all parts of the behavior have been performed.
◦ Ex: Spinning a web is complicated, yet spiders spin webs correctly on the first try.
◦ Ex: When it’s time for the female weaverbird to lay eggs, the male weaverbird builds an elaborate nest. Although a young male’s first attempt may be messy, the nest is constructed correctly.
Develops during an animal’s lifetime. Is the result of learning. Learning is the result of experience.
AKA a behavior that an organism must learn.
Allows animals to respond to changing situations.
Animals with more complex brains exhibit more behaviors that are a result of learning.
◦ Ex: As they grow older, these quail chicks will learn which organisms to avoid.
Occurs when an animal forms a social attachment to an other organism within a specific time period after birth or hatching.
◦ Ex: Gosling and ducklings follow the first moving object it sees after hatching. The moving object, whatever it is, is imprinted as its parent.
Behavior modified by experience. Many animals learn by trial and error.
◦ Ex: When baby chicks first try to feed themselves, they peck at many stones before they get any food. As a result of trial and error, they learn to peck only at food particles.
◦ Ex: When you first try to dribble a basketball, you end up chasing after the ball many times before you get it right. You eventually learn by trial and error (practice) how to dribble.
Behavior is modified so that a response to one stimulus becomes associated with a different stimulus.
◦ Ex: Fish swim to the top of the tank when they see a hand because they think it means food.
◦ Ex: Raccoons will run to a feeder when it hears it run even if it is out of corn because it has associated the sound of the feeder with food.
One type introduces a new stimulus before the usual stimulus.
◦ Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov performed experiments using this type. He knew that the sight and smell of food made hungry dogs secrete saliva. Pavlov added another stimulus. He rang a bell before he fed the dogs. The dogs began to connect the sound of the bell with food. Then Pavlov rang the bell without giving the dogs food. They salivated when the bell was run even though he did not give them food.
The other type of conditioning is when the new stimulus is given after the affected behavior.
◦ Getting an allowance for doing chores is an example of this type of conditioning. You do your chores because you want to receive your allowance. You have been conditioned to perform an activity that you may not have done if you had not been offered a reward.
A form of reasoning that allows animals to use past experiences to solve new problems.
◦ Ex: Doing an new math problem, you use what you have learned previously in math to solve problems. If you use what you have learned, then you have used a kind of learned behavior called insight.
◦ Much of adult human learning is based on insight.
When you were a baby, you learned by trial and error.
As you grow older, you will rely more on insight.
When something doesn’t pose a threat to our safety, we get use to it. We learn to just put up with the harmless stimuli rather than waste our energy reacting to it.
When an animal is repeatedly exposed to stimuli that neither hurts nor helps, it stops responding.
◦ Ex: A chipmunk in a park would eventually get use to human footsteps, so that they will not run away every time.
Prairie dogs give alarm calls when mammals, large birds, or snakes approach. Individual prairie dogs are particularly susceptible to becoming food for a coyote, hawk, or rattlesnake, but as a group they are fairly well-defended, as their alarm calls make it easy to escape in burrows.
◦ When prairie dog towns are located near trails used by humans, giving alarm calls every time a person walks by is a waste of time and energy for the group. Habituation to humans is an important adaptation in this context.
To find food
To interact in social groups
To avoid predators
To reproduce
Animal behaviors usually are strategies for survival.
Some behaviors, such as eating, or escaping predators are obvious survival strategies.
But other behaviors, which also are important for survival, may not be as easily understood.
◦ For example, a flamingo standing on one leg, holding the other close to its body, is exhibiting heat regulation behavior. By tucking its leg close to its body, the bird conserves heat that would otherwise escape from the exposed leg.
0
