Animal Behavior Flashcards
What is behavior?
Behavior is how an animal acts in response to a particular situation or stimulus.
- influenced largely by its anatomy and physiology.
- genetic and environmental factors are involved
What is Ethology?
Ethology is the study of animal behavior
What is the syrinx?
The syrinx is the avarian vocal organ. Its a bony structure at the base of the trachea
What is the function of birdsong?
The functions of birdsong include:
- Attracting a mate
- Inducing another bird to reveal its sex
- Establishing its territory
- Scaring away predators
- Species identification
What is instinct?
An instinct is an unlearned behavior or response triggered by a specific stimulus. It is believed to be genetically influenced.
- A chick pecks at the parent’s beak to get food
- Moving your hand away from a hot stove
What is learned behavior?
Learned behavior is acquired or eliminated as a result of experience. This behavior can change with time.
What is innate behavior?
Innate behavior (instinct) does not change with time and occurs rapidly without mistake. - Squirrels twirling their tail when falling to become upright.
What is fixed action pattern?
Fixed action pattern
- a series of actions triggered by a key stimulus
- acts that are performed in identical fashion.
- reflexes are the simplest fixed action pattern
- a sign stimulus (releaser) will initiate a fixed action pattern to trigger
- highly stereotyped
- Instinctive behaviors
- Triggered by a sign stimulus ( can be extinguished if sign stimulus is removed)
- Examples:
- A red object causes the stickleback fish to attack. The red object is the releaser (sign stimulus)
- Some birds mating dances have a female bird as a releaser
- Goose rolling an egg back into the nest triggered by seeing it out of the nest. Even if the egg is removed and put back in the nest while the goose is rolling it, it can’t help but continue the action as if they egg were still there.
What is kinesis in regards to animal behavior?
Kinesis a simple activity change in response to a stimulus that is non-directional. Examples:
- With increased humidity, woodland mice move slower
- Pill pugs move toward a moist region
What is taxis in regards to animal behavior?
Taxis is movement that is directional triggered by a stimulus
a) + taxis: Moves toward a stimulus (fish swim toward the current)
b) - taxis: Moves away from a stimulus (a cockroach moves away from a light source)
What is the difference between kinesis and taxis?
Kinesis has random and undirected motion, while taxis has specific and directed motion
What are phototaxis, chemotaxis, and magnetotaxis?
- Phototaxis: movement in response to light
- Chemotaxis: movement in response to a chemical
- Magnetotaxis: movement in response to a magnetic field
What is migration?
Migration is the long distance location change often seen demonstrated by fish, birds, and some animals.
- expeditions that start and finish in predictable places certain times of the year
- Triggered by temperature, the availability of food, or both
- Some animals can move in a certain compass direction in a way that still baffles scientists
What is imprinting?
Imprinting is a type of behavior that has both innate and learned components, but happens during a critical time period.
- An animal is exposed to a specific key stimulus early in its behavioral development and forms an association with it.
- It is difficult to modify through later experiences
- Example: Baby geese follow the first thing they see after hatching, thinking that it must be their mother
What is Habituation?
Habituation is the eventual cessation of reaction to a constantly repeated stimuli
- Animals learn to stop responding to stimuli that aren’t important to them.
- It increases the animal’s reaction to new stimuli.
- Dual factor theory: When the brain realizes a stimuli is neither helpful or harmful it tunes it out to focus on other stimuli that may be harmful or helpful.
- Examples:
- Humans can tune out white noise after awhile
- Urban birds stop fleeing from humans
What do mating ceremonies often consist of?
A mating ceremony will often consist of:
1) Aggressive
and
2) Appeasing behavior
For example:
- If a certain fish exhibits a “zig” toward a female, it is taken as an act of aggression. If a fish “zags” it is taken as an act of kindness
What are some behaviors that can be involved in courtship?
Courtship behavior can involve:
- Mating dances: from simple to very elaborate
- Unusual displays: Flamboyant colors, raising the chest, or flaring of wings
- Nest building: nest decorating with moss, pebbles, and even flowers has been observed
- Singing
- Preening: Close contact between the pair can diffuse aggression
- Feeding: the male bird might bring the female bird a tasty treat
What are insects mating behavior?
Insect mating behavior is driven by competition. There are numerous suitors available for a female insect, so the males must stand out from the crowd. The behaviors may include:
- Serenades: crickets, mosquitoes, and even fruit flies use distinct calling and courtship songs
- Dancing and foreplay: Spiders will dance, certain flies will do zig zag patterns in the air, certain insects will touch each others antennas as a type of foreplay
- Gifts: Some insects will capture food and present it to the female
- Pheromones: Certain pheromones will be released to trigger a mate attraction
What are pheromones?
Pheromones are chemicals released by organisms that may evoke:
- Behavior responses
- Developmental responses
- Reproductive responses
Examples:
- Females in estrus will emit an odor that will drive animals mad trying to get to the female
- Ants and caterpillars will mark their path with pheromones
- Dogs marking their territory with pheromone laden urine
What type of sexual relationships do we see with animals?
We see all types:
- monogamy
- polygamy
- polyandry
- often the relationships only last a single mating season
What is Associative Learning?
Associative Learning is a type of learning in which one stimulus is linked to another through experience. It is a form of conditioning being learned and unlearned based upon the response it generates. There are two types of associative learning:
- Operant conditioning
- Classical conditioning
What is operant conditioning?
Operant conditioning is trial and error learning where the animal learns to associate its behavior with a reward or punishment. This is the basis for most animal training
- Reward (Positive reinforcement): A rat presses a lever and food comes out or a dolphin gets a treat for jumping through the hoop
- Punishment (Negative reinforcement): A dog gets shocked by a shock collar when it barks
What is classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning is where we form an association between two stimuli resulting in a learned response.
- Pavlovs’s dogs and the bell. As the bell was rung before food was presented, the bell began to be associated with food and a salivation response was noted
- Extinction: Eventually as he started ringing the bell and not bringing the food, the conditioned response disappeared.
What is foraging behavior?
Foraging behavior is searching the wild for food resources. It includes eating and the way an animal searches for and captures food
- Genetics and environment both contribute to this behavior
- Foragers balance the risk of being killed by predators with their own metabolic needs
- Foraging can be:
- Individual: Capture and consume prey alone
- Group: capture and consume prey together
- Young animals can learn from the adults or their peers
- This is driven in a huge part by natural selection as only the activities that maximize energy return will be favored
