Animal behaviour research methods Flashcards
animal behav in psych
Animal cognition
Animal sociality
Animal welfare
Use themes to answer wider Qs
what is behaviour?
‘The most observable response than an animal gives to a stimulus
Stimuli
o ‘Events that cause an organism to perform an activity or start a reaction’
Animal research v. flexible
Infer info from observation
Start of reaction v. imp
Lots of “noise” around this
Normally involves movement
Categorised by particular types
E.g.:
o Social behavs = interaction (directed behavs) to another indv
o Foraging behavs = set pattern that a species uses to locate and identify food
Measure the things that relate back to your Q – don’t have to write down everything
Scientific literature helps with the definitions
example of behaviour in diff species
Ducks
o Use time period of animal’s day to figure out why animals do certain things
o Function of behaviour tells you about the underlying state of the animals
- Animal evolved to perform certain behaviour
Penguins
o Maintenance – way animal keeps itself alive
o Grooming behavs get same fitness behaviour as ducks foraging for food
o Will have to be measured in different way
applied functions of animal behav
Improving how we keep managed animals
Improving how we interact with animals that we “use”
Adding to our understanding of internal motiv and reasons for behav perf
Interactions with animals – buffer against stress
Why do animals sometimes go wrong? – tell us about underlying psychological state
Animals don’t self-report
what is animal welfare?
‘The state of an indv as it attempts to cope with its env’ (Broom, 1986)
Only universal definition
Very useful – direct where ask questions
Helpful to measure what animals are trying to tell us
pure aspects of animal behav
Evolutionary bio
Behav bio
Cognition and consciousness
Human and animal comparisons
Animals make good models of human psychological and behavioural research
Behav ecology = how does env shape behaviour animals perf
Behaviour poorly kept in fossil record
why is behav in psych?
Evolutionary components to human behaviour
Cross-species comparisons
Why do behavs occur in the form that they do? E.g. problem solving/learning?
Understand human behav based on comparisons with animals
is behav in psych less good option?
No!
o Highly transferable research skills
o Excellent training in collecting diff forms of data
o Rigorous exp design and inferential eval (i.e. good stats practice)
is animal behav amazing?
Yes!
o Animal subjects wont suddenly decide to not P in exp
o Animal subjects can be managed in one place
o Animal subjects provide real insight into human world
o Animal research covered by same ethical processes, considerations and review as human research
o Can control a lot of the noise
planning a behav study can be complex and needs to take into account many variables
Null – thing you assume won’t change
Alternative – what you think might differ
IV – what you have control over
DV – what you measure
EV – beyond your control – need to evaluate impact on study – understand why you might have r’ship that you have
Animal can’t tell you what is wrong
recording methods
sampling
recording
The species observed and question being asked will dictate recording methods utilised in the exp design
Justify why
sampling
Popn itself and their behav
Who to watch?
What to measure?
recording
Mechanism used to write down behavs (how to collect data) and what time/env/habitat
Think about when they are likely to perf the behav
Can use background literature
How to record?
When to measure?
sampling techniques
Ethogram – list of all behavs that you want to observe with definition
o Can be found in published literature
o Define what the behaviours are – others can then also record the same behaviours
ad libitum
focal
scan
behav
Focal and scan sampling have pos and negs depending in question and method
Behav sampling - e.g. courtship display/mating conditions
Work out who we collect data from
ad libitum
All behavs recorded
