Animal Behavior

Question 1

What is a behavior?

Answer 1

An action carried out by muscles, under control of the nervous system, in response to a stimulus

Question 2

List some different animal behaviors

Answer 2

Foraging, social behavior (ex. aggression), reproductive behavior, habitat selection, communication, learning/memory

Question 3

What is ethology?

Answer 3

The study of animal behavior. Focus placed on behavioral processes rather than taxonomic group.
Looks at a single organism, and sees what that organism does in response to a stimulus.

Question 4

What is comparative psychology?

Answer 4

The study of animal behavior and how it specifically relates to humans.
Often places non-humans in ‘artificial’ situations to explore phenomena like learning and memory

Question 5

What is behavioral ecology?

Answer 5

The study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior.
Integrates proximate (how) and ultimate (why) explanations

Question 6

What are Tinbergen’s 4 questions?

Answer 6

Mechanism - What stimulus elicits the behavior, and what physiological mechanisms mediate the response?
Ontogeny - How does the animal’s experience during growth and development influence the response?
Adaptation - How does the behavior aid survival and reproduction?
Phylogeny - What is the behaviors evolutionary history?

Question 7

What 2 questions (Tinbergen’s) are proximate questions?

Answer 7

Mechanism and Ontogeny

Question 8

What 2 questions (Tinbergen’s) are proximate questions?

Answer 8

Adaptation and Phylogeny

Question 9

What are the 4 types of behaviors that can be explained in terms of reproductive success? (Ultimate causation)

Answer 9

Foraging behavior - methods of eating/fleeing
Antagonistic behavior - competition (territory)
Mating behavior - signals sent to other sex
Parental care - taking care of offspring to aid in their survival
Natural selection favors these behaviors to spread throughout the population gene pool.

Question 10

Which of the following is NOT required for a behavioral trait to evolve by natural selection?
A) The behavior varies among individuals.
B) Some component of the behavior is genetically inherited.
C) An individual’s reproductive success depends in part on how the behavior is performed.
D) In each individual, the form of the behavior is determined entirely by genes.

Answer 10

D
Genes and environment both influence phenotype, both influence behavior!

Question 11

What are the two types of stimuli that elicit behavior? (Proximate causation)

Answer 11

External stimuli - environmental cues such as temperature, day length, salinity, and signals from other organisms
Internal stimuli - internal sensory systems, hormones, and nervous signaling

Question 12

Who was David Lehrman?

Answer 12

The first biologist to map out how external and internal stimuli are connected with behavior.

Question 13

What is communication?

Answer 13

The transmission and reception of signals

Question 14

What is a signal?

Answer 14

A behavior that causes a change in another animals behavior

Question 15

What is an example of an animal that uses tactile cues?

Answer 15

Honeybees feel each other and get information from each other (a dance), in order to communicate where food is. Communicates both distance and direction.
Longer distance = longer waggle, large figure 8 shape

Question 16

What are the 4 types of animal signals?

Answer 16

Visual signals, auditory signals, tactile signals, and chemical signals (pheromones)

Question 17

What is an innate behavior?

Answer 17

A developmentally fixed behavior that does not vary among individuals.
Fixed action pattern.
Ex. Walking! Baby deer walk almost right after birth

Question 18

What is a learned behavior?

Answer 18

A behavior that has been modified based on experience.
Ex. Tying your shoes, learning to speak a language

Question 19

What is imprinting? Is it an innate or learned behavior?

Answer 19

Usually between parents and offspring. Offspring imprint on mother and follow her around, learning from her.
It has components of both an innate behavior and a learned behavior.

Question 20

What is associative learning? What are the two types?

Answer 20

Relating one feature of the environment with another.
Operant conditioning and classical conditioning

Question 21

Describe both operant conditioning and classical conditioning

Answer 21

Operant conditioning: Associating signal with consequence/reward. Ex. Bird eats monarch butterfly, gets sick, doesn’t eat that type again.
Classical conditioning: associating two things that are found together but are not causative of each other. Ex. Pavlov’s dog experiment - dog salivates when bell is rung.

Question 22

What is spatial learning?

Answer 22

A mental representation of the spatial environment inducing locations of objects/features and their relative relationships to one another. Ex. Chickadees hiding food for winter and remembering where it is!

Question 23

What is social learning?

Answer 23

Learning through the observation of others.
Ex. Tool use in chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows, alarm calls in vervet monkeys.

Question 24

What is culture? What is a “meme”?

Answer 24

Culture is a system of information transfer through a population and across generations. Separate from the gene pool! Transferred one to one.
Meme is a “cultural” unit of transmission, passes from one brain to another.

Question 25

Both genetic and memetic evolution have shaped Homo sapiens.

Answer 25

We are very genetically similar to humans thousands of years ago, but memetic evolution has shaped society much quicker than genetic evolution can.
How you act today is mostly socially learned. Cultural evolution has shaped modern society.

Question 26

What is cognition and what are the 4 things it involves?

Answer 26

Cognition is a complex form of thinking.
Awareness (awareness of self)
Reasoning (what logically makes sense)
Recollection (what has worked before)
Judgement (what may happen)

Question 27

What is altruism?

Answer 27

Selfless behavior

Question 28

What are 3 altruistic behaviors animals do?

Answer 28

Manipulation - one animal is being manipulated to help the other
Reciprocity - mutual support of one another
Kin selection - helping others out because they are family

Question 29

What is game theory?

Answer 29

Game theory evaluates behavioral ‘strategies’ where the outcome depends on ones own strategy in relation to those of other individuals.
The evolution of behavioral strategies over time.
The prisoners dilemma

Question 30

What is frequency dependent selection?

Answer 30

The fitness of different phenotypes (behavioral ones) is dependent on the frequency of other phenotypes in the population.
The best strategy for you depends on what others are doing.
Ex. Side-blotched lizards - yellow, blue, and orange males. Yellow females. The male color populations cycle in frequency.

Question 31

Although many chimpanzees live in environments containing oil palm nuts, members of only a few populations use stones to crack open the nuts. The likely explanation is that
A) members of different populations differ in learning ability.
B) members of different populations differ in manual dexterity.
C) the behavioral difference is caused by genetic differences between populations.
D) the cultural tradition of using stones to crack nuts has arisen in only some populations.

Answer 31

D