Midterm 2 (9-13) Flashcards
Bumblebees & Flowers
- Innate tendency to fly to flowers for food
- Must sample flowers & learn which are of the best quality
- Diff seasons/ areas/ species
- -No point of innate tendency to visit a specific flower b/c of the constant change in abundance
Emperor Penguins
- Females return to sea & leave eggs w males for winter
- Males keep eggs warm on top of their feet
- Huddle together & rotate positions
- Females return after 4mo & males go eat
Kittiwake Sea Guls
- Recognize chick by the location they store them in
- Wouldn’t remember they had a chick if it moved from that spot
- Wide variation amongst birds in learning to recog parents & chicks
- Diff bird species learn distinct info that’s most valuable in specific ecological settings
Rats & Aversion Learning
Group 1
- Drank water, lick = noise
- Shock to foot
- Later didn’t want to drink water during noise
Group 2
- Drank tasty water & got sick (needles :[ )
- Later chose to drink plain water > tasty water
Bayesian Inference
-Probability that sickness was due to taste is higher than that it was due to noise… innately tuned to the assoc b/w taste & sickness
Memory
-Neuronal representation of information
Spatial Memory & Voles
Meadow Vole
- Polygamous, more mates, more land than females
- Difference b/w spatial memory/ navigation in M & F is prevalent
Prairie Vole
- Monogamous, one mate, equal land as mate
- No difference in spatial memory/ navigation in M & F
London Taxi Drivers
- Study ~2 years for a test to become a cab driver
- Have larger hippocampal volume w experience
- Shows how plastic the brian is
- -Likely mechanisms = neurogenesis, survival or new neurons, synaptogenesis
Humans & Spatial Memory
- Men w larger territories over evo time = ^fitness
- +Mating opportunities
- -Fossil evidence = maj leg bones in men = +remodelling, suggests + range size for men > women
What Falls Under the Category of Associative Learning?
Classical Conditioning
- Assoc b/w conditioned stim & conditioned response
- -Ie. Eye blink & tone experiment
Instrumental Conditioning
-Association for subject b/w a behaviour & result
Non-Associative Learning
Sensitization
- Increased response to stimuli following the presentation of a prominent stimulus
- -Ie. Aplysia, dog bite
Habituation
- Decreased response to a stim following repeated presentation of that stim
- -Ie. shoch & shadow experiment w worm
Extinction
- CS without US
- -Ie. Tone w/o air puff (classical)
Bayes’ Theorem
Probability
-Chance a subject has HIV if test is +
Prior Probability
-Chance for HIV before any event
Posterior Probability
-Outcome = the probability for HIV given + test
Variation
-Variation in life ie. school & course quality, friends, moods, potential mates etc
Uncertainty
-Inconclusive ie. the weather next weekend, summer employment, source for tuition $ etc
Rescorla-Wagner Model
-When a CS & US are paired, the change in strength of their association changes proportionally to the learning rate & the difference b/w the max strength possible & the current strength
Anticipatory Learning
- Do we learn to assoc cues w events that assoc the two?
- Prior to the event itself?
- Anticipate something & adapt physiologically
Alcohol & Unfamiliarity
- Subjects assoc famil cures w anticipated ned effects & take (unconscious) physiological measures to counteract such effects
- Learning helps to anticipate & prep bod for events w strong physiological impacts
Solitary Wasps
- Individual learning
- Rarely interact w other wasps (unless fighting)
Inadvertent Social Information
- Emit info to others by doing something
- Others pay attention & do similarly
- -Ie. skating on an iced lake
- You are cued
Local Enhancement/ Social Facilitation
- Observers increase the likelihood of visiting a place frequented by others, or are more likely to perform a behaviour performed by others
- No explicit soc learning
- Benefit = joining a model that prob is rich in resources & safe
- -Ie. Milk-bottle opening by blue tits
Signals
-Consist of intentionally communicated information
Rat Breath Experiment
- Social learning is provided w observer
- Preference order = Powdered face -> Powdered Rear -> Dead powdered face -> plastic rat
- ^ In order of most living
- Did chemical analysis… Carbon disulfide = influential factor for soc learning
Pine Seeds & Rats
- Difficult to learn how to open pine cones w/o being shown
- Mothers show children… social learning? (mother-offspring social learning)
What do Cheetahs, Peregrine Falcons & Merekats have in Common?
Mother-Offspring Social Learning
- Mothers provide “processed prey” to kin
- Progressively increase difficulty in killing the remains of the offspring
- Offspring eventually learn
Anthropomorphism
-Attribution of human traits to non-human animals
Imitation/ Observational Learning
- Observer learns a new behaviour by watching a demonstrator
- Majority of animals don’t do it but humans do it effortlessly
-Mirror Neurons: in pre-motor cortex = active when an observer observes & executes an action
Imitation in Quail
Control = watched door randomly slide & quail ate food
-No assoc b/w matched directional movement of the screen
Imitation = watched quail slide screen & eat food
-Assoc b/w matched directional movement of the screen
Tandem-running Ants & Teaching
- Leaders new location of food, but students = naive
- -Leader kept moving only if student tapped on her leg or abdomen
- Cost to teacher = 4X slower movement
- Benefit to student = find food faster than when searching alone (201 vs 310 sec)
Teaching
- Not many cases of teaching & hard to find examples
- Must have dedicated leader
- Cost to teacher & benefit to student
Culture
-Suite of local tradition that uniquely identifies a certain population
Tradition
-Distinctive behav prattern shared by 2+ individs in a soc unit, which persists over time & that new practitioners acquire in part through soc learning
Chimps & Harvesting Termites
- First stick = thick & breaks into tunnel
- Second stick = brush tip to extract termites
- Set is unique to specific groups
Chimps & Pan Pipe
- Shown poke, lift or no technique to open pan pipe & acquire food
- A lot of people shown to lift, poked instead
- -Is poking a tradition unique to that group?
Relative Brain Size
- Positive linear association b/w brain & body weights
- -Bigger body = Bigger brain
- -Humans have a larger brain size than expected for their body size
What’s Brain Size Influenced By?
Innovation
-Creative & novel solutions to enviro or soc problems
Social Learning
Executive Brain
-Brain structures involved in soc learning & innovation
Positive correlation b/w innovation, soc learning & the relative volume of the executive brain
What are the Five Types of Taste?
- Sweet: simple carbs
- Bitter: prob poisonous
- Salty: high in Na
- Sour: prob spoiled
- Umami: free glutamate = protein
How Prevalent are Spices Depending on Geo Area?
- Higher temp = more spices
- -Therefore spicier recepies
Energy Intake vs. Energy Expenditure
- We used to have to fight for our food & it wasn’t very abundant
- Now, it is very accessible & we don’t need to move around a lot for it
- We are fat now lol
What is the Correlation Between Neurogenesis and Exercise in Mice?
-Positive correlation between an increase in neurogenesis and exercise
Optimal Fat Reserves in Animals
- Animals show adaptive fat storage
- Fat = insulation & insurance
- = reduced mobility, predated more
What Should Animals Focus on When it Comes to Food?
- Encounter rate: # of items encountered/ unit time
- Energy content: calories
- Handling time: time from capture to complete ingestion
- Predation Risk
What is the Optimal Diet Model?
-Mathematical model that allows us to predict what prey types a forager should eat based on energy content, encounter rate & handling time
How Long Should an Animal Stay in a Patch of Food?
-Until that said patch of foods net rate of energy intake is the same as the average of others
What is the Moose Solution?
- Moose balance a great diet
- Should spend ~18% of their foraging time on sodium-rich, energy-poor aquatic plants
^^ This is approximately what the moose does!
Pica: Video
- Canadian species from the rockies
- Collects variety of plants
- Forages close to shelter to avoid predation & takes several hundred trips daily to collect & stack plants
- -Spends all day feeding and storing food for the winter
- Food is low cal and contains poisonous plant compounds
