Chapter 17:1
Pages 454-459
“Types of Behavior”
I. Innate Behavior
***Dogs treat people as part of their own pack
A. Behavior is the way an organism acts toward its
environment. (You are the stimulus that causes your
dog to bark and wag its tail…your dog’s reaction to
you is a response.) Was this behavior learned or did
your dog behave this way on his own?
B. Innate Behavior is Inherited:
1. A behavior that an organism is born with is an
innate behavior …such behaviors are inherited and
they do not have to be learned.
2. Innate behavior patterns are usually correct the first
time an animal responds to a stimulus.
a. Kittiwakes are seabirds that nest on narrow
ledges… the chicks stand still as soon as they
hatch.
b. The chicks of a related bird, the herring gull,
which nests on the ground, move around as soon
as they can stand.
c. A kittiwake chick can’t do this because one step
could mean instant death….They hatch already
knowing they must not move around.
3. Animals that have short life spans often have patterns
of innate behavior.
a. The lives of most insects, for example, are too
short for young to learn from the parents…In many
cases, the parents have died by the time the
young hatch.
b. And yet, every insect reacts automatically to its
environment…A moth will fly toward a light, and
cockroach will run away from it….They do not
spend time learning what to do.
c. Innate behavior allows animals to respond
quickly to a stimulus in their environment without
taking the time to choose a proper response.
B. Reflexes
1. The simplest innate behaviors are reflex
actions…an automatic response that does not involve
the brain.
a. Sneezing, shivering, yawning, jerking your
hand away from a hot surface and blinking your
eyes when something is thrown toward you are
all reflex actions. All animals have reflexes.
3. During a reflex, a message passes from a sense
organ along the nerve to the spinal cord and back to
the muscles…The message does not go to the brain.
a. You are aware of the reaction only after it
has happened…When you respond reflexively,
you do not think about how you will respond.
b. Your body reacts on its own, without your
thought processes…A reflex is not the result of
conscious thought.
C. Instincts
1. An instinct is a complex pattern of innate
behavior.
2. A spider…spinning a web is complicated, and yet
spiders spin webs correctly on the first try…Sea
turtles instinctively head for the sea as soon as they
hatch.
3. Unlike reflexes, instinctive behaviors may have
several parts and takes weeks to complete.
4. Instinctive behavior begins when the animal
recognizes a stimulus and continues until all parts of
the behavior have been performed.
II. Learned Behavior
A. Animals have both innate and learned behaviors …they
develop during an animal’s lifetime.
1. Learning is the result of experience or practice…
You aren’t born knowing how to play the piano; you
must learn this behavior through practice.
2. In animals, the more complex their brains, the
more their behavior is the result of learning.
a. Instinct almost completely determines the
behavior of insects, spiders and other arthropods.
b. But fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and
mammals all can learn.
3. Why is learning important for animals?
a. Learning allows animals to respond to new
situations.
b. In changing environments, animals that have
the ability to learn new behavior are more
likely to survive.
c. This is especially important in animals with
long life spans because the longer an
animals lives the more likely it is that the
environment in which it leaves will change.
4. Learning can modify instincts…grouse and quail
chicks leave their nest the day they hatch…They can
run and find food, but they can’t fly…when
something moves above them, they crouch down and
keep perfectly still until the danger is past…They
will crouch without moving even if it is a falling leaf.
5. Older birds have learned that leaves will not harm
them, but they, too freeze when a hawk moves
overhead.
B. Imprinting:
1. Learned behavior includes imprinting, trial and
error, conditioning and insight.
2. Have you ever seen young ducks following their
mother??? This is an important behavior because
the adult bird has had more experience in finding
food, escaping predators, and getting along in the
world… Imprinting is a type of learning in which an
animal forms a social attachment to another
organism within a specific time period after birth or
hatching.
2. Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian naturalist, developed the
concept of imprinting…working with geese, he
discovered that a gosling follows the first moving object
it sees after hatching….it recognized the moving object
as its parent.
a. It later recognizes similar objects as members
of its own species…This behavior works well when
the first moving object is an adult goose…but
goslings hatched in an incubator may see a human
first may imprint on him or her.
b. Animals that becomes imprinted toward animals
of another species never learn to recognize
members of their own species.
C. Trial and Error
1. Can you remember when you learned to ride a
bicycle? Your probably fell many times before you
learned to balance on the bicycle….But after a while
you could ride without having to think about it. (Skating
is another example)
2.Behavior that is modified by experience is called
trial and error learning.
a. Both invertebrates and vertebrates learn by
trial and error…When baby chicks first learn to
feed themselves, they peck at many spots before
they get any food…they seem to learn to peck only
at grain.
b. particular stimulus may cause a different
response in the same animal at different times…
When a cat sees food, it will eat it if it’s hungry, but
if it has just eaten, it will ignore the food.
c. For a hungry rat…the motive to learn a maze may
be the food at the end of the maze…motivation is
something inside an animal that causes the animal to
act…which is necessary for learning to take place.
D. Conditioning
1. Animals often learn new behaviors by
conditioning…behavior is modified so that a response
previously associated with one stimulus becomes
associated with another.
2.Russian scientist Ivan P. Pavlov was the first person
to study conditioning…He knew that the sight and
smell of food made hungry dogs secrete saliva.
a. Pavlov added another stimulus…He rang a bell
when he gave the dogs food.
b. The dogs began to connect the sound of the bell
with food…Then secreted saliva when the bell was
rung even though he did not show them food.
c. The dogs were conditioned to respond to the bell.
2. An American psychologist John B. Watson
demonstrated that responses of humans can also be
conditioned.
a. In one experiment, he struck a metal object
each time an infant touched a furry animal.
b. The loud noise frightened the child…In time,
the child became frightened by the furry
animal when no sound was made.
E. Insight
1. How does behavior learned in the past help a
animal when it is confronted by a new situation?
2. Suppose you are given a new math problem to
solve…Do you use what you have previously learned
in math to solve the problem? If you have, then you
have used a kind of learned behavior called insight…
a form of reasoning that enables animals to use past
experiences to solve new problems.
3. In Wolfgang Kohler’s experiments with
chimpanzees, a bunch of bananas was placed too
high for the chimpanzees to reach.
a. Chimpanzees piled up boxes
found in the room, climbed up on
the box, and reached the bananas.
b. Most of adult human learning
is also based on insight.
Summary
***Behavior that an animal is born with is innate behavior. Other
animal behaviors are learned through experience.
***Reflexes are the simplest innate behaviors. An instinct is a
complex pattern of innate behavior.
***Learned behavior includes imprinting, in which an animal forms a
social attachment soon after birth. Behavior modified by
experience is learning by trial and error. Conditioning occurs
when a response associated with one stimulus becomes
associated with another. Insight uses past experiences to solve
new problems.