Measuring and Recording Animal Behaviour

Question 1

What is latency?

Answer 1

the time between the stimulus occurring and the response behaviour.

Question 2

What is frequency?

Answer 2

the number of times a behaviour occurs within the observation period.

Question 3

What is duration?

Answer 3

the length of time each behaviour occurs during the observation period.

Question 4

What are ethograms?

Answer 4

• Ethograms are a method of recording animal behaviours over a set period of time.
• They list species-specific behaviours to be observed and recorded in the study. Recording the duration of each of the behaviours in the ethogram, together with the total time of observation, allows the proportion of time spent on each behaviour to be calculated in a time budget.
• Consideration must be made when constructing an ethogram, avoiding anthropomorphism when analysing behaviour. This can lead to invalid conclusions.