animal behaviour Flashcards
What are 2 basic approaches to enthology (animal behaviour)?
- neuroethology
- an extension of neurobiology
- investigations in how brains PRODUCE behaviour
- focuses on developmental biology & mechanisms of evolution
- is a field within physiology - behavioural ecology
- investigates in how animals INTERACT with their ECOSYSTEM
- focuses more on the selective pressures of evolution
What are types of behaviours?
- innate behaviour
- migration
- rhythmic patterns
- communication
- learning
What is meant by innate behaviour (“instincts)?
- behaviour that is mostly “PREPROGRAMMED” in the animal’s genes
- doesn’t need to be learned (in some cases individuals can learn to refine the behaviour)
Examples of innate behaviour (“instincts”)?
- swimming (even in infant humans)
- weaving spider webs
- building bird nests
- when a brand new honey bee imerges from 1 of the cells in the comb, she immediately starts cleaning it (nobody taught her she just does it already)
What is meant by fixed action patterns (FAPs)?
- are generally simple innate behaviours
- never learned, not even for refinement
- generally cannot be interrupted (has to finish)
- triggered by some kind of stimulus
- are often stimuli for triggering other FAPs
- more complex FAPs are usually strings of individual simple FAPs
Why are they “hard-wired” & unchangeable?
- FAPs are often critical for animal’s survival or successful reproduction
- reliable
- once evolved, it’s safest to leave alone
What are the types of animal communication WITH examples?
- visual
- ex: males advertising their fitness to prospective mates (peacock) - chemical
- ex: pheromones, chemical traits, etc - tactile
- ex: the honey bee waggle dance (the info conveyed regarding locations of food sources is conveyed tactilely!) - auditory
- ex: woodpeckers “territorial drumming”
What are pheromones?
- many animals live in a rich chemosensory world
- many animals use pheromones to influence the behaviour or other physiology of other individuals
- sex pheromones in moths
- alarm pheromones in bees
- queen mandibular pheromone in bees
- brood pheromone in bees
- sex pheromone in mammals (via the vomeronasal organ)
- sex pheromone in humans?
What are the different types of learning?
- imprinting
- associative learning
- operant condition
- classical conditioning
What is imprinting learning?
- possibly the simplest form of associative learning
- in animals that do this, new babies will associate whomever they see first as “mom”…even if “mom” is not the same species, let alone actually their mother
- imprinting can work the other direction too
- in some animals, mothers imprint on their young
- again, this can sometimes go across species
(a mother bird for ex, can be the mother for fish b/c look similar)
What is associative learning? What are the 2 types?
learning to associate 2 previously unrelated things
- operant conditioning
- classical conditioning
Associating learning - Operant conditioning
- in operant conditioning, an animal learns to make new associations ON ITS OWN (often by accident)
- as you’re studying for an exam…
- you’re dog smells your pie & decides to help himself
- of course, you yell at him & he jumps back down
- he will quickly learn this new association
the previously unrelated things the dog learned to associate with one another were (1) jumping on the table & (2) getting yelled at
Associating learning - classical (pavlovian conditioning)
- 3rd party is actively training the animal to make the association
- honey bees quickly & easily can be trained to associate a specific odour with a sucrose reward
- while not as easy, bees can also be trained to associate a specific colour with a sucrose reward
How does learning work, from a neurobiological perspective?
- for 2 diff stimuli to be associated with 1 another, those inputs into the brain must converge
- aka, somewhere in the brain (ex: peppermint) & the unconditioned stimulus (ex: sugar) must fire onto the SAME neuron at the SAME time
Difference b/t Operant & Classical conditioning?
Operant Condition is essentially trial an error. Animal tries something, some result occurs, and if that result was meaningful, the animal learns to associate what it tried with the result.
Classical Conditioning (Pavlovian Conditioning) is active training by a third party. The third party provides both a cue and a reward (or punishment), or a different cue with no reward (or punishment). The animal then learns to associate the correct cue with the reward (or punishment).
