Behaviour and epigenetics Flashcards
define behaviour
Actions coordinated by an animal in response to environmental stimuli
types of behaviour:
What is innate behaviour?
Innate behaviour is present from ‘birth’. This means it is genetically ’hard wired’ into the nervous system and is inflexible, requires no practice and usually has some basic survival function e.g. avoiding harm or finding food. Your own reflexes, such as pulling your hand away from a hot saucepan, are innate behaviour patterns.
Types of behaviour: Innate behaviour
describe taxis
All behaviour in simpler organisms is probably innate. For example, orientation behaviour: responses of the whole organism to a stimulus, such as a taxis, where the organism moves towards or away from light, heat etc. (e.g. maggots move directly away from light -negative phototaxis)
Types of behaviour: Innate behaviour
What is kinesis? (Include an example in your explanation)
Another orientation is called a kinesis. This involves a whole organism moving, but it’s not moving towards or away from something.
For example, an organism could change its level of activity in response to a stimulus
e.g. a woodlouse will move more quickly and turn more rarely when it is in a dry environment - yellow, but slows down and turns more in a humid environment - blue
What is learned behaviour?
The ‘opposite’ of innate behaviour is learned behaviour, where an animal develops a response to a stimulus which is not present from birth, usually requires practice, has some flexibility and is not always vital for its survival.
Types of behaviour: Learned behaviour
what Is habituation
Habituation – an animal learns to ignore a repeated, but harmless stimulus e.g. cows in a field near a railway may at first run away from trains, but soon learn to ignore them.
Types of behaviour: Learned behaviour
What is imprinting?
Imprinting – Young animals learn to follow the first large, moving object they see, since this is usually their mother, this protects them from harm and provides them with food. Famously, Lorenz hatched out goslings and imprinted them on himself, they then followed him everywhere.
Types of learned behaviour: Learned behaviour
Explain classical conditioning using an example
An animal learns to associate a ‘neutral’ stimulus (e.g. a bell) with one which normally produces a response (e.g. food) and eventually responds to the neutral stimulus as if the normal stimulus is there
Define conditioning
A slightly different form of association occurs when an animal learns to associate its own actions with a particular stimulus. This is called operant conditioning or ‘trial and error’ learning.
What is latent learning?
Animals (often juveniles) observe other members of their species and remember to carry out observed behaviours later in life e.g. Lambs observing their mothers eating food pellets (even though they were still only drinking milk) later remembered this source of food on transport ships, lambs separated from their mothers would starve rather than eat pellets.
What is insight learning?
: The apparent ability to imagine a solution to a problem, without trial and error. Only really seen in comparatively intelligent animals such as monkeys and apes e.g. Chimps realized that they could stack up boxes and climb up to reach bananas hung high out of their reach in experiments by Kohler
Explain social learning
A lot of animals learn by copying the behaviours of other individuals of the same species, usually in a social group. This allows a the behaviour to be passed rapidly to the whole group, including juveniles so that the behaviour is passed down the generations. Since the behaviour may have originated with the innovation of one individual in the past this leads to ‘cultural differences’ between different groups of the same species e.g. one group of chimpanzees may use stones to crack nuts, another may use sticks.
Name some important components of social behaviour
Many species interact with one another, sometimes producing quite complex societies.
Clearly, such interactions are only possible if individuals can identify each other and only have meaning if they can communicate with each other.
Basically, one individual will produce a ‘signal’ (sign stimulus) which is detected by another and often triggers an innate response.
Give an example of fixed action patterns whilst referring to sign stimuli
A good example of this is the begging of gull chicks by pecking at the red spot on its parent’s beak, which is a clear sign stimulus, the adult then responds by regurgitating food.
These innate behaviours are often called stereotyped behaviour or fixed action patterns.
We assume the sign stimulus (red spot) brings about a response due to fixed pathways in the brain without any real ‘decision making’.
Are these simple interactions innate or learned?
Refer to fixed action patterns
In many ways, these simple interactions are just complex strings of innate responses – nobody teaches the chick to peck at a red spot and neither does the adult ‘decide’ to regurgitate food.
But, some fixed action patterns can be modified by experience (typical of learned behaviour), as illustrated by experiments by Tinbergen. He found that, although chicks innately peck at the red spot, some learn to grasp the parent’s beak, which gets them more food.
