III. Animal Behavior Flashcards
is the study of how animals move in their environment, how they interact socially, how they learn about their environment, and how an animal might achieve cognitive understanding of its environment.
Animal Behavior
Importance/significance
A factor in obtaining maximum production and efficiency in breeding, feeding and management
Causes of Behavioral Responses in Animal
- Result of 3 interacting forces
1. Heredity (Genetics) – Breed
2. Learning experiences (simple learning)
3. Intelligence
certain strains/breeds within a species have been selected on a genetic basis and then trained for a specific behavioral response
e.g.
Horses – excellent for trotting, pacing, or draft
Terriers – for fighting at the slightest provocation
Beagles – for hunting and run in packs with little fighting
Heredity (Genetics) – Breed
Internal factors
Produces behavioral response in several ways:
a. Can affect the growth and development of many body parts
e.g. sensory/motor organs
b. Genes are responsible for production of various enzymes, hormones, and other chemical substances in the body
e.g. chicken undergoes sex reversal depending on the hormones in the blood stream
unlearned form of behavior
Instinct and reflexes
Type of learning behavior
a. Habituation
b. Conditioning
c. Trial and error
d. Insight learning (reasoning)
e. Imprinting
simplest type of learning
animal responds in a certain way without thinking (habitual reaction)
means by which an animal learns to ignore certain stimulus
Habituation
associates a response with a certain stimulus as a result of reinforcement
Conditioning
practice of rewarding or punishing an animal when it responds successfully or unsuccessfully
Reinforcement
rewarded when perform correctly
positive reinforcement
punished when do incorrectly
negative reinforcement
most prevalent in higher mammals
ability to respond correctly the first-time animal encounters a certain situation
Insight learning (reasoning)
a form of early social learning
tendency to respond to the first object to which it is exposed, and the permanence of attachment to the object once imprinting occurs
Imprinting
Ability of animal to learn to adjust successfully to certain situation
Intelligence
Inhibit the ability to do others
instinct
most intelligent of all animals
Mammals
Internal state of an animal which causes the immediate behavioral response
Drives or tendencies to respond in a particular manner
Motivation
controls many types of behavior
has inhibitory or stimulating center
Hypothalamus
especially sexual activities (anterior pituitary gland)
ovulation, onset of puberty, and normal cycle in female
Endocrine glands
Methods of Animal Communication
- Sound
- Chemicals
- Visual displays
Uses of sound
- feeding
- distress call
- sexual behavior (courtship song and related fighting)
- mother young interaction to establish contract and evoke care behavior
- maintaining the group in its movements
and assembly
Types of Animal Behavior
- Ingestive behavior – eating and drinking behavior
- Elimination behavior – waste elimination
- Shelter Seeking behavior
- Agonistic (combat) behavior
- Mother young Behavior – care-giving and care seeking behavior
- Investigative (exploratory) behavior – Exploratory behavior
- Gregarious behavior
- Allelomimetic Behavior – mutual mimicking behavior
- Sexual Behavior (To be discussed under reproductive physiology of animal)
is the first ingestive behavior trait common to all neonate to mammals
Suckling
An attempt to avoid injury from the sun, wind, rain, predators, and/or insect
Shelter Seeking behavior
only animal that face the storms head on
Bison
Includes fighting, flight, and other related reaction associated with conflicts
- Agonistic (combat) behavior
Refers to the flocking or herding instinct of certain species
Gregarious behavior
Advantages of gregarious behaviour
a. detecting the enemy and protecting themselves
b. obtaining food
c. easily identified if there is any missing and sick individual
