Behavior Flashcards
Behavior
A whole animal response to the environment; often involves movement but does not require movement
What are examples of some behaviors?
Thermoregulation (basking out in the sun to get warmer), body maintenance (licking oneself to clean), hiding, avoiding capture, capturing prey, anting, ambush behavior
Imprinting
The first formal study of behavior; first moving object the ducks see=mom and want to follow (imprinted into brain)
What are the four questions that Tinbergen asked?
What triggered the behavior?
What is the behavior’s utility?
How does the behavior develop?
How did the behavior evolve?
Proximate causes
Nearby or what is happening right now; causation and function
Causation
“What triggers the behavior?”; stimulus/mechanism
Function
“What is the behavior’s utility” or what is it for; adaptation
What is an example of causation and function?
See a predator (causation) and tells to alert the other animals (function)
Ultimate causes
“Grander why”; includes development and evolution
Development
“How does the behavior develop?” and how does it change across a lifetime; ontogeny
Evolution
“How did the behavior evolve?”; phylogeny-comparing across diff. species
Innate
Instincts/don’t need to be taught; often fixed in form or action (same throughout); usually performed identically in all individuals; Ex: baby crawling
Learned
Experience shapes behavior; large individual level variation (diff. per person); may be maintained through teaching; Ex: learning how to make a fire
Fixed action pattern
Innate behavior that once triggered will always go to completion; triggered by a sign stimulus; is not a reflex because it requires processing by the brain; Ex: goose egg rolling behavior
Associations
Learned behavior; Ex: classical conditioning, imprinting, food aversions
Food aversions
Developed when an animal associates nausea or pain w/ a food; Ex: bird eats monarch butterfly -> gets sick -> associates sickness w/ butterfly and doesn’t want to eat that anymore
Classical conditioning
Association of an arbitrary (random) stimulus with a reward (usually food); Ex: Ivan Pavlov and dog (bell -> drool b/c of food)
What can a pigeon learn to associate and what can it not?
It can associate a sound w/ danger but not a color w/ danger.
Open ended
Learned behavior at any point in time; Ex: food aversions and song learning
Sensitive period
Learned behavior at a specific time in life; Ex: imprinting and song learning
You raised a bird in total isolation. At adulthood this bird sings a natural sounding song what can we infer about song learning?
It requires a tutor
Learning only during a sensitive period
Open ended
Innate
Innate
What are some reasons why animals communicate to other animals?
To alert danger, internal state, show competitiveness, and alert current position
Modality
Medium used to transmit info
What are some modalities used in communication?
Visual, acoustic, chemical, tactile, electric
How is communication shown to evolve between species?
Raising eyebrows only in dogs but not wolves. Chickadee making an alert sound and other birds are able to understand it (b/c of convergent evolution)
