Behaviour/Learning and Animals

Question 1

To improve animal welfare & psychological wellbeing

Answer 1

Behavioural enrichment

Question 2

In ___________ environments, animals can usually escape
from severe conflict situations. For example, to avoid
fighting with a conspecific, the animal can offer
appeasement/submissive gestures or flee.

Answer 2

Natural

Question 3

In ________ environments, animals cannot escape
from conflict situations, which can lead to extreme
stress and may result in stereotypic behaviours.

Answer 3

Captive

Question 4

Behavioural indicators of poor animal welfare:

Answer 4

• Pacing
• Head flicking
• Weaving or ‘dancing’
• Biting bars
• Pattern swimming
• Digging

Question 5

Name for:
* ‘abnormal’ or aberrant behaviours
* repetitive behaviour patterns
* and have no obvious function or goal & can be indicative of a welfare problem.

Answer 5

Stereotypic behaviours

Question 6

Tinbergen’s (1963) four ‘whys’ (determinants) of behaviour:

Answer 6

1. Function (survival / adaptive value): what is it for?
2. Causation (control): how does it work?
3. Ontogeny (development): how does it develop?
4. Phylogeny (evolution): how did it evolve?

Question 7

A descriptive catalogue of behaviours that occur within
the species

Answer 7

Ethogram

Question 8

Burghardt’s (1997) 5th ‘why’ (determinants) of behaviour

Answer 8

What is private experience of animal presenting the behaviour?
Personal world, subjective experience (individual)

Question 9

Tinbergen (1963) - How does behaviour contribute to survival & reproductive
success & what are consequences of performing it?
(populations)

Answer 9

1. Function (survival / adaptive value): what is it for?

Question 10

Tinbergen (1963) - What are the mechanisms which enable the behaviour to be
performed? Physiology, learning, morphology, ecology.
(individual)

Answer 10

2. Causation (control): how does it work?

Question 11

Tinbergen (1963) - How the behaviour pattern develops in the individual & how the
environment may modify it. (individual)

Answer 11

3. Ontogeny (development): how does it develop?

Question 12

Tinbergen (1963) - Evolutionary history of behaviour in a population or lineage.
Genetics, culture (populations)

Answer 12

4. Phylogeny (evolution): how did it evolve?

Question 13

Term describing an instinctive behavioural sequence that is highly stereotyped and species-characteristic.

Answer 13

Fixed Action Pattern

Question 14

Fixed Action Pattern that is stereotyped (same form throughout a species)
* shaped by natural selection
* strongly controlled by genetic mechanisms

Answer 14

Rituals

Question 15

Fixed Action Pattern that is exaggerated ritualized signals
* more stereotyped
* more complex
* may include autonomic responses (e.g.,
piloerection, changes in blood flow, intention
movements, displacement movements etc.)

Answer 15

Displays

Question 16

Learning without obvious reward

Answer 16

Latent learning

Question 17

Early learning limited to a short critical period; Irreversible; Prefigures later responses

Answer 17

Imprinting

Question 18

Solving a problem through perceiving interrelationships

Answer 18

Insight learning

Question 19

Behaviour (act) or structure which alters behaviour of others - effective because of receiver’s response

Answer 19

Signal

Question 20

Feature of the world, animate or inanimate, that can be used as a guide to future action

Answer 20

Cue

Question 21

Evolutionary process that stereotypes a cue into a signal

Answer 21

Ritualization

Question 22

Signal whose cost is greater than required by sheer efficacy (effectiveness)

Answer 22

Handicap

Question 23

Loss of fitness resulting from making a signal

Answer 23

Cost

Question 24

Signal whose intensity is causally related to quality
being signaled & which cannot be faked (e.g., olfactory secretions used for marking)

Answer 24

Index

Question 25

Signal whose reliability does not depend on its cost - i.e. not a handicap- & which can be made by most members of the population- i.e. not an index (e.g., communal troop defensive vocalisations)

Answer 25

Minimal cost signal

Question 26

A signal whose form is similar to its meaning (e.g., pointing)

Answer 26

Icon

Question 27

A signal whose form is unrelated to its meaning (e.g.,
language)

Answer 27

Symbol