Lab 1

Question 1

What is animal welfare?

Answer 1

(Short version) - When an animal has optimal living conditions and doesn’t experience pain, suffering or distress.

(all the big details)
The absence of strong negative feelings (suffering), and presence of positive feelings (pleasure) in animals.

An individual’s welfare also depends on their attempts to cope with the environment and their success.

The state of the animal’s body and mind (and satisfaction of its nature)

The extent of the animal’s freedom to live in accordance with its biological nature

The fulfillment of their five main needs:
1. Need for a suitable environment
2. Need for a suitable diet
3. Need to exhibit normal behavior patterns
4. Need to live with or without a group
5. need to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease

Question 2

What are the five freedoms (1965)?

Answer 2

1. Freedom from hunger, malnutrition and thirst
2. Freedom from fear and distress
3. Freedom from heat stress or physical discomfort
4. Freedom from pain, injury and disease
5. Freedom to express normal patterns of behavior

Question 3

What is an Ethogram?

Answer 3

It’s a “catalog” of behaviors or actions exhibited by an animal

Question 4

What is different about Ethology and Behaviorism?

Answer 4

Ethology studies animal behavior under natural conditions

Behaviorism studies animal behavior in response to stimuli or to trained behavioral responses in a laboratory

Question 5

What are the different stages of behavioral analysis?

Answer 5

1. Determination of the sensitivity and specificity of senses. (echolocation, intensity of light needed for vision.)
2. Determination of effective stimuli eliciting a reaction

Question 6

What is an instinct?

Answer 6

An inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behavior. These can be both inborn and learned. (often triggered by specific stimuli)

Question 7

Law of heterogeneous summation

Answer 7

The reaction can be elicited by different objects -> the sum of the features to elicit a behavioral response

Question 8

What are the different phases of instinctive behavior?

Answer 8

1. Appetitive phase - Influenced by learning and prior experience, highly flexible
2. Consummatory phase - innate (inborn), species-specific phase
3. Relaxation phase

Question 9

What are the different learning mechanisms?

Answer 9

1. Habituation
2. Imprinting
3. Classical conditioning
4. Operant conditioning
5. Imitation, social learning, cognitive learning, insight

Question 10

What is habituation?

Answer 10

A simple learned behavior in which an animal gradually stops responding to a repeated, non-relevant stimulus.

Question 11

What is imprinting?

Answer 11

A form of learning in which a very young animal fixes its attention on the first object with which it experiences a visual, auditory, or tactile experience and then follows that object.

Question 12

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 12

A behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus.

The term classical conditioning refers to the process of an automatic, conditioned response that is paired with a specific stimulus.

Question 13

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 13

A learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition of a reward or a punishment.

Question 14

What is imitation?

Answer 14

The ability to recognize and reproduce others’ actions, thus developing a new skill from observing these skills from another individual.

Question 15

What is insight, problem-solving?

Answer 15

Immediate and clear learning or understanding that takes place without overt trial-and-error testing.

• Can help them solve new problems