B3.2 Behaviour and Evolution Flashcards
What is innate behaviour?
Any inherited behaviour is known as innate behaviour. Animals can respond in the correct way to a stimulus straight away even though they’ve never experienced it before eg. Newborns instinctively suckle from their mothers.
What is a reflex action?
Reflex actions are simple inherited behaviours, where we respond to stimuli. They are automatic actions which protect us from danger. There are some more complex reflex actions like earthworms moving away from sunlight and sea anemones’ tentacles are stimulated by chemical emitted by their prey.
What is learned behaviour?
Learned behaviour is behaviour which has to be learned. It allows animals to respond to changes in their environment and learn from previous situations.
What is habituation?
Animals learn not to respond to a stimulus that doesn’t effect them through habituation. By ignoring non-threatening and non-rewarding stimuli animals can use their energy more efficiently. This is especially important in you organisms who are naturally frightened of loud and bright stimuli.
What is imprinting?
Imprinting is when an animal learns to recognise its parents and instinctively follows them. This happens in organisms which can move soon after they are born, who instinctively follow the first object is sees, so that it can be provided with food and shelter. However animals have no sense of what their parent looks like, so might imprint on something else.
Describe classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning happens when an animal learns passively to associate a neutral stimulus with an important one, for example a dog associating the arrival of food with the sound of a bell. The response is automatic and reinforced by repetition. For example Pavlov’s dogs salivated when they heard a bell because they associated it with food.
Describe operant conditioning.
Operant conditioning is where an animal learns actively to associate and action with an award or a punishment. This happens when children are rewarded or punished for certain actions. For example Burrhus Skinner trained pigeons and rats to press a green button in order to relieve food.
How do we use conditioning to train animals?
Humans use both classical and operant conditioning to train animals. Operant training is used most often, so when an animal does something you want it to do it gets an award.
Give examples of how humans have trained animals.
Guide dogs are trained to stop at roadsides and wait for commands.
Sniffer dogs are rewarded when they find a specific smell.
Police horses are conditioned classically to ignore stimuli other than commands from their riders.
Why do animals need to communicate?
Animals need to communicate to keep the group together, to warn the group about predators, to communicate mood to avoid fights, baby animals communicate their needs to their parents, predators communicate to coordinate attacks.
How do animals communicate using sound?
Shakes and dolphins communicate over long distances using low frequency sounds and bird use their calls to declare their territory, attract a mate or warn others about predators.
How do animals communicate with chemicals?
Many animals use chemical scents to mark the boundaries of their territory, like dogs urinating on things.
Female moths use pheromones to attract male moths from several kilometres away.
How do animals use fistula signals to communicate?
Honey bees have a waggle dance which they use to communicate that they’ve found food.
Mammals tend to communicate with gestures.
Chimps threaten others and intimidate them to avoid fights by staring at other chimps or raising an arm.
Dogs submit by rolling onto their backs.
Organisms use visual signals in mating too, like birds’ of paradise dances.
Facial expressions.
What is an ethologist?
Someone who studies animal behaviour
What did Tinbergen discover about gulls?
Nikolaas Tinbergen studied innate behaviour in herring gulls. Newly hatched gull chicks know how to peck their parents’ beaks to ask for food. The chicks instinctively pecked the red dots on their parents beaks and instinctively pecked red dots on cardboard too.
Describe Lorenz’ study on geese?
Konrad Lorenz studied how geese imprint on their mothers. He took two groups of geese and ant he done with their mothers and group 2 without their mother. The group 2 chicks imprinted on Lorenz, and viewed him as their mother.
What is behaviour?
An organism’s response to changes in its environment. These responses help the organism to survive, and can be inherited or learned. Both genes and environment play a part in influencing behaviour.
What did Dian Fossey discover about mountain gorillas and Jane Goodall about chimpanzees?
By studying the animals in their natural habitats they discovered that:
- The apes worked together to search for food
- They protected each other from attacks
- All of the males had a social rank to prevent fights
- The groomed each other which was an affectionate behaviour, like humans hugging.
How can you use choice chamber to indenting animal behaviour?
A choice chamber contains two or more chambers in which different environments can be set up. You can then put some animals into the chamber, usually insects, and see which chamber they go towards. This means you can use a choice chamber to look at the effect of environmental changes in animal behaviour.
Give examples of how animals attract mates.
- Many use a song or call to attract a mate (birds, whales, frogs etc.) and it is mostly the makes who do this.
- some insects, usually the female release pheromones.
- Males fight go indicate who is stronger and therefore the better mate.
- courtship displays: dancing, strutting, posing are common in birds. Males also tend to be brighter because they have more testosterone.
How do animals mate?
- Male mate with all the females in a population eg. Lions’ harems.
- The male will mate with a different female each mating season. Some birds do this.
- Some males will mate with many random females during the mating season.
- Some animals mate with one partner for life eg. Penguins and gibbons.
How do organisms protect their young?
Protection can just involve staying with the young to keep them together and fend of predators. Some animals construct nests to protect their young eg. The weaver bird.
How do organisms feed their young?
If a species feeds and protects their young, no the parents need to be involved, like penguins.
How do organisms teach their young?
Certain behaviours, like flying and walking are innate so don’t need to be taught however other skills do need to be. For example human babies need to be taught to do all sorts of stuff like talking.
