Animal Behavior

Question 1

~Animal behavior

Answer 1

● Enables organisms either to search for food or to find a mate
● Evolved because of substantial evolutionary pressures

Question 2

~Proximate causes

Answer 2

● Immediate, genetic, physiological, neurological and developmental mechanisms that determine how an individual behaves

Question 3

~Ultimate causes

Answer 3

● Result from the evolutionary pressures that have fashioned an animal’s behavior

Question 4

~Ethology

Answer 4

● The study of behavior and its relationship to tis evolutionary origins
● Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Niko Tinberen

Question 5

~Karl von Frisch

Answer 5

● Knwon for his extensive studies of communication in honeybeeds and his famous description of their waggle dance

Question 6

~Niko Tinbergen

Answer 6

● Known for his elucidation of the fixed action pattern

Question 7

~Konrad Lorenz

Answer 7

● Known for his work with imprinting

Question 8

~Fixed action pattern (FAP)

Answer 8

● Innate, highly stereotypic behavior, htat once begun is continued to completion, no matter how useless
● INitiated by external stimuli called sign stiuli

Question 9

~Releasers

Answer 9

● When sign stiuli are exchanged between members of the same species, they are known as releasers

Question 10

~Migrationg

Answer 10

● In response to environmental stimuli, like changes in day length, precipitation and temperature
● THe environment also provides cues to navigation

Question 11

~Sun as guidance in migration

Answer 11

● Some migrating animals track their position relative to the sun
● Although the sun’s position changes throughout the day, animals can monitor chagnes in the position of hte sun against an internal circadian clock to keep track of where they are

Question 12

~North star as guidance in migration

Answer 12

● Nocturnal animals keep track of their position using the North Star, which ahs a fixed position in the sky

Question 13

~Magnetic field as guidance in migration

Answer 13

● Pigeions track their positions relative to Earth’s magnetic field

Question 14

~Piloting

Answer 14

● Orienting by landmarks
● Gray whales migrate seasonally between the Berig Sea and the coastal lagoons of Mexico by knowing and remembering elements in their envrioenment

Question 15

~Pheromones

Answer 15

● Animals mark their territory with chemical signals called pheromones
● These can also act as alarm signals
● Ex) If a catfish is injured, a substance is released from its skin that disperses int he water and induces a fright response in other fish
- The frightened fish become hypervigilant and form into tightly packed schools for protection at the lake or river bottom

Question 16

~Visual signals

Answer 16

● Effective in open places in daylight
● Provide information about many factors including the sex, strenght, and social status of an individual
● Ex) Waggle dance in bees that gives details about the location of a food source

Question 17

~Learning

Answer 17

● Process in which the responses fo the organism are modified as a result of experience
● THe capacity to learn can be tied to length of life span and complexity of the brain

Question 18

~Habituation

Answer 18

● One of the simplest forms of learning

● An animal comes to ignore a persistent stimulus so it can go about its business

Question 19

~Associative learning

Answer 19

● A type of leraning in which one stimulus becomes linked to another through experience
● Classical and operant

Question 20

~Classical conditioning

Answer 20

● A type of associative learning
● Widely accepted because of Pavlov’s experiment with the dog
● Dogs salivate when exposed to food nad pavlov trained dogs to associate hte sound of a bell with food
● The result of this conditioningw as that dogs would salivate upon hearing the sound of the bell

Question 21

~Operant condition

Answer 21

● Also called trial and error learning
● An animal learns to associate one of its own behaviors with a reward or punishment and then repeats or avoids that behavior
● Best known were done by B.F. Skinner with the rats
● An animal can learn to carry ou t a behvior to avoid punishment or for a reward

Question 22

~Imprinting

Answer 22

● Learning that occurs during a sensitive or critical period in the early life of an individual
● Irreversible for hte length of that period

Question 23

~Mother-offspring bonding

Answer 23

● An example of imprinting
● Critical to the safety and development of hte offspring
● iF the pair does not bond, the parent will not care for the offspring and the offspring will die
● THe response disappears at the end of the juvenile period

Question 24

~Problem solving abilities

Answer 24

● Highly developed in some mammals, especially in primates

● It varies with individual ability and experience

Question 25

~Sensitive period and stage-learning in birds’ singing

Answer 25

● THe period in which young bird memorizes the song from other members of their species and chips in response to hearing it
- Although itself does not sing during the period
● It is followed by a second learning phase when the juvenile birds sings tentative notes of the song and compares it with what he hears aroun dhim
● Once its own song matches what he has heard, the song is “crystallized” as the final song

Question 26

~Learning from others

Answer 26

● many animals learn to solve problems by observing the behavior of other individuals
● young wild chimps learn how to crack open oil palm nuts wth stons by copying experienced chimps
● Wild vervet monkeys in Kenya learn to make alarm calls
- At first they make indiscriminate calls in response to danger and later fine tune the call as they learn from older monkeys in the group

Question 27

~Social behavior

Answer 27

● Any king of interaction among two or more animals, usually of the same species
● Types of social behaviors are cooperation, agonistic, dominance hierarchies, territoriality, and altruism

Question 28

~Cooperation

Answer 28

● Enables the individuals to carry out a behavior, such as hunting, that thye can do as a group more successfully than they can do separately
● Lions and wild dogs will hunt in a pack, enabling them to bring down a larger animals than an individual could ever bring down alone

Question 29

~Agonistic behavior

Answer 29

● Aggressive behavior
● Involves a variety of threats or actualcombat to settle disputes among individuals
● Commonly held over access to food, mating, or shelter
●Involves both real aggressive behavior as well as ritualistic or symbolic behavior
● Once two individuals have setteld a dispute by agonistic behavior, future encounters between them usually do not invovle combat or posturing

Question 30

~Submissive behaviors

Answer 30

● If the aggressor succeeds in scaring the opponent, the loser engages in submissive behavior that syas “You win, I give up”
● Ex) Looking down or away from the winner
● Dogs or wolves put thei rtail between their legs and run off

Question 31

~Dominance hierarchies

Answer 31

● Pecking order behaviors that dictate hte social position an animal has in a culture
● Commonly seen in hens where the alpha animal controls the behaviors of all the others
● The next in line, the betal animal, controls all others except the alpha animal
● Each animal threatens all animals beneath it in the hierarchy
● The top-ranked animal is assured of first choice of any resource, including food after a kill, the best territory, or the most fit mate

Question 32

~Territory

Answer 32

● An area an organism defends and from which other memebrs of the community are excluded
● Established and defended by agonistic behaviors and are used for capturing food, mating, rearing young
● The size varies with its function and the amount of resources available

Question 33

~Altruism/kinselection/inclusive fitness

Answer 33

● A behavior that reduces an individual’s reproductive fitness but increases hte fitness of the colony or family
● In honeybees, where worker females share 75% of the same genes
- When a worker honeybee stings an intruder while defending a hive, the worker sacrifices itself for its relatives, individuals who carry most o fhte same genes as that particular worker
- The individual dies, but relatives sruvive to pass on their genes, including the gene for altruistic behavior

Question 34

~Benefits

Answer 34

● Measured in terms of fitness enhacement
- The more fit an animal is, the more likely it will get to pass more genes to hte next generation
● Natural selection will favor behavior htat minimizes the costs of foraging and maxiizes its benefits

Question 35

~Foraging behavior

Answer 35

● All the behaviors invovled in food gathering and eating
● Benefits of eating
● Costs of energy and danger expended in foraging
- Time spend foraging is also time lost form defending one’s territory or from protecting one’s youn

Question 36

~Mating behaviors

Answer 36

● Mating rituals, whether the animals are monogamous or polygamous and the extent of parental care
● Dictates morphological characteristics

Question 37

~Polygynous species

Answer 37

● Such as elk
● Once male inseminates many females and the maels are larger and more highly ornamented
● The difference is caleld sexual dimorphism

Question 38

~Polyandrous species

Answer 38

● Femal mates with more than one male

● THe female is the showier of the two in sexual dimorphism

Question 39

~When is animal behavior carried out?

Answer 39

● In response to external or internal stimuli

● Can be solitary or social, fixed or variable

Question 40

~What is an example of an FAP involving stickeback fish

Answer 40

● Stickleback fish attacks other males that invade its territory
● THe releaser for hte attack is the red belly of hte intruder
● The stickleback will not attack an invading male lacking a red underbelly, but it will readily attack a nonfishlike wooden model as long it has a splash of red visible

Question 41

~What was the classcial imporinting experiements carried out by Knorad Lorenz?

Answer 41

● Geese hatchlings will follow the first thing they see that moves
● Although the object is usually the mother goose, it can be a box tied to a string or something else

Question 42

~What is the purpose of symbolic behavior and what is an exmple of it?

Answer 42

● The use of symbolic behavior often prevents serious harm
● A dog shows aggression by baring its teeth and erecting its ears and hair
● It stand upright to appear taller and looks directly at its opponent