Behaviour/Learning and Animals Flashcards
To improve animal welfare & psychological wellbeing
Behavioural enrichment
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.
Natural
In ________ environments, animals cannot escape
from conflict situations, which can lead to extreme
stress and may result in stereotypic behaviours.
Captive
Behavioural indicators of poor animal welfare:
- Pacing
- Head flicking
- Weaving or ‘dancing’
- Biting bars
- Pattern swimming
- Digging
Name for:
* ‘abnormal’ or aberrant behaviours
* repetitive behaviour patterns
* and have no obvious function or goal & can be indicative of a welfare problem.
Stereotypic behaviours
Tinbergen’s (1963) four ‘whys’ (determinants) of behaviour:
- Function (survival / adaptive value): what is it for?
- Causation (control): how does it work?
- Ontogeny (development): how does it develop?
- Phylogeny (evolution): how did it evolve?
A descriptive catalogue of behaviours that occur within
the species
Ethogram
Burghardt’s (1997) 5th ‘why’ (determinants) of behaviour
What is private experience of animal presenting the behaviour?
Personal world, subjective experience (individual)
Tinbergen (1963) - How does behaviour contribute to survival & reproductive
success & what are consequences of performing it?
(populations)
- Function (survival / adaptive value): what is it for?
Tinbergen (1963) - What are the mechanisms which enable the behaviour to be
performed? Physiology, learning, morphology, ecology.
(individual)
- Causation (control): how does it work?
Tinbergen (1963) - How the behaviour pattern develops in the individual & how the
environment may modify it. (individual)
- Ontogeny (development): how does it develop?
Tinbergen (1963) - Evolutionary history of behaviour in a population or lineage.
Genetics, culture (populations)
- Phylogeny (evolution): how did it evolve?
Term describing an instinctive behavioural sequence that is highly stereotyped and species-characteristic.
Fixed Action Pattern
Fixed Action Pattern that is stereotyped (same form throughout a species)
* shaped by natural selection
* strongly controlled by genetic mechanisms
Rituals
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.)
Displays
Learning without obvious reward
Latent learning
Early learning limited to a short critical period; Irreversible; Prefigures later responses
Imprinting
Solving a problem through perceiving interrelationships
Insight learning
Behaviour (act) or structure which alters behaviour of others - effective because of receiver’s response
Signal
Feature of the world, animate or inanimate, that can be used as a guide to future action
Cue
Evolutionary process that stereotypes a cue into a signal
Ritualization
Signal whose cost is greater than required by sheer efficacy (effectiveness)
Handicap
Loss of fitness resulting from making a signal
Cost
Signal whose intensity is causally related to quality
being signaled & which cannot be faked (e.g., olfactory secretions used for marking)
Index
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)
Minimal cost signal
A signal whose form is similar to its meaning (e.g., pointing)
Icon
A signal whose form is unrelated to its meaning (e.g.,
language)
Symbol
