Chapter 39b: Animal Behavior

Question 1

Three definitions of behavior

Answer 1

1) The actions or reactions of an animal in response to external or internal stimuli
2) The manner in which a thing acts under specified conditions or circumstances, or in relation to other things
3) An action carried out by muscles or glands under control of the nervous system in response to a stimulus

Question 2

Example of behavior

Answer 2

– Feeding and antipredator behavior
– Instinct and learning
– Homing and navigation
– Reproductive behavior and mating systems – Social behavior`

Question 3

Automeris moth “wing-flipping” raises 1) “_____” questions about 2) ______ causes of behavior.

Hint: H:P ; W:U

Answer 3

1) How
2) Proximate

• What is the causal relationship between the animal’s genes and its behavior?
• Is the trait to some extent inherited from the moth’s parents?
• How has the development of the moth from a single cell to a multimillion cell adult affected its behavioral abilities?
• What stimuli trigger the response, and how are these stimuli detected?

Question 4

Automeris moth”wing-flipping” raises 1) “_____” questions about 2) ______ causes of behavior.

Answer 4

1) Why
2) Ultimate

• Has the behavior evolved over time?
• If so, why did the changes take place?
• What was the original step in the historical process that lead to the current behavior?
• What are the functional consequences of the behavior?
• Does the behavior help individual moths overcome obstacles to survival and reproduction?

Question 5

Proximate causes of behavior

Answer 5

• Genetic-developmental mechanisms
– Effects of heredity on behavior
– Gene-environment interactions underlying the development of sensory-motor mechanisms
• Sensory-motor mechanisms
– Nervous systems for the detection of environmental stimuli
– Hormone systems for adjusting responsiveness to environmental stimuli
– Skeletal-muscular systems for carrying out responses

Question 6

Ultimate causes of behavior

Answer 6

• Historical pathways leading to a current
behavior
– Events occurring over evolution from the origin of the trait to the present
• Selective processes shaping the history of the
behavioral trait
– Past and current usefulness of the behavior in reproductive terms

Question 7

Example of proximate causes of behavior

Answer 7

Niko Tinbergen and the “beewolfs”

Question 8

Example of ultimate causes of behavior

Answer 8

Niko Tinbergen and eggshell removal by black-headed gulls

Question 9

Genetic basis for behavior

Answer 9

• Taken for granted with other aspects of the phenotype but often assumed to the contrary for behavior – why?
• Some of the sorts of evidence
– Easy to select a breed of dog that is good with children, or good at retrieving, or good at herding, etc.
– Selection experiments
• E.g.,nest-building behavior in mice
– Heritability studies
• E.g.,the period gene in Drosophila


Question 10

The false dichotomy: “Learned OR instinct?”

Answer 10

Most behavior can be usefully viewed as having both an innate/genetic component and an environmental/developmental/learning component, and both are necessary
• John Alcock uses analogy of a cake: it makes little sense to ask if this cake is more recipe or more ingredients – you need both to make the cake.

Question 11

Instinct: Innate behavior

Answer 11

Defined:
– Stereotyped – takes the same form in all individuals • A.K.A. a Fixed Action Pattern (FAP)
– Appears in full form the first time it occurs, doesn’t require practice
– Stimulus also is fixed • A.K.A Sign Stimulus

• Adaptive where ..
– Important that behavior is correct the first time, little time for learning
– Limited capacity of the nervous system for learning

Question 12

Example of innate behavior

Answer 12

• E.g., food begging behavior by newly hatched gull chicks, and by “code-breaking” rove beetles, egg-ejection by cuckoo chicks.
• Code-breaking rove beetles ability to scam food from worker ant
• Egg ejection by cuckoo hatchlings

Question 13

Learned behavior

Answer 13

• Defined:
– A relatively permanent change in behavior, or
potential for behavior, that results from experience
• Forms of learning
– Habituation: relatively persistent waning of a response that results from repeated presentations not followed by any form of reinforcement
– Classical (or “Pavlovian”) conditioning
– Operant (or “Instrumental”) conditioning

Question 14

Examples of learned behavior

Answer 14

• e.g., instincts can be modified by learning: male thynnine wasps and orchid mimics

Question 15

Interaction between instinct and learning: Force pushing a certain behavior depends on the 1) _______ of 2) ________ being exhibited.

Answer 15

1) Type
2) Behavior

i.e. Galah’s raised by cockatoos:

**Galah-Like Behaviors
• Chick begging calls (for food)
• Alarm calls

**Pink-Cockatoo-Like Behaviors
• Contact calls (used to maintain contact with other members of flock)
• Flight style (slow, sweeping wing beats of cockatoos, not rapid shallow
wing beats of galahs)
• Food Preferences

Galah-like behaviors are INNATE and Cockatoo-like behaviors are LEARNED

Question 16

Biased learning examples

Answer 16

**Clark’s nutcracker and seed caches
– A jay that caches food and remembers where
– But Clark’s nutcracker remarkable ability is specific to remembering the location of food caches (i.e., it’s not just an unusually “smart” jay)
– Genetic differences among species in the kind and amount of learning that are possible

**Courtship song acquisition in white-crowned sparrow

• Narrow window of time during youth in which it must hear the right song (wrong song won’t do, but simplifying here)
– Marked parallels with human language acquisition
– “learning OR instinct” clearly makes no sense here

**Operant conditioning in lab rats
– Animals generally can not learn to associate any stimulus with any response
• Can associate taste with getting sick and learn to not drink water with the taste
• Can associate sound with getting a shock and learn to move to avoid the shock
• But, can not associate taste with getting a shock and learn to avoid the flavored water to avoid getting a shock
• And can not associate sound with getting sick and learn to move to avoid getting sick
– The “biases” make sense in light of the ecology of the animal

• Operant conditioning in lab rats continued
– The “biases” make sense in light of the ecology of the animal:
• A distinctive taste in your mouth is not associated in the real world with an approaching cat, nor is a sound associated with getting sick from eating a new (poisonous) food.

Question 17

Homing devices in migratory birds

Answer 17

Often times astonishing abilities, sometimes using sensory abilities we do not possess
• Homing in pigeons
– Requires both a map sense and a compass sense • Map sense: know where you are relative to home
• Compass sense: know which way is “north”
– Clock compensated solar compass
• Revealed by clock-shifting releases
– Birds held indoors and gradually shifted to light schedule 6 hours early
– Taken west of home, released at true dawn. Birds think it is noon
– Map sense ?
• Can use earth’s magnetic field, but perhaps also olfaction, infrasound, plane of polarized light, plus …. ???