Natural And Atypical Behaviours Flashcards
What is foraging?
When an animal spends time searching for food by wandering around.
What is hunting?
When a predator peruses another animal with the intention to kill and usually eat them.
What is sleeping?
When the animals’ body and brain goes into a rest mode, allowing them to gain more energy.
What is a social behaviour?
The suite of interactions that occur between two or more individual animals, usually of the same species.
What is grooming?
Behaviours involved in cleaning and maintaining body function and hygiene. Social grooming, or allogrooming, is grooming of one individual by another. This behaviour is displayed by many different animals, including mammals, insects, fish, and birds.
What is courtship?
The behaviour by which different species select their partners for reproduction. Usually, the male starts the courtship, and the female chooses to either mate or reject the male based on his “performance“.
What are territorial behaviours?
The methods by which an animal, or group of animals, protects its territory from incursions by others of its species.
What is hyperactivity?
They’re excitable, exploratory, and can suffer from symptoms of ADHD.
What is excessive inactivity?
Inactivity and a lowered metabolic rate, that is entered in response to high temperatures and arid conditions.
What is a displacement behaviour?
Usually occurs when an animal is torn between two conflicting drives, such as fear and aggression. Displacement activitiesoften consist of comfort movements, such as grooming, scratching, drinking, or eating.
What are stereotypical behaviours?
A repetitive, invariant behaviour pattern with no obvious goal or function.
What is confinement?
Animals have been confined to smaller areas often display atypical behaviours as a coping mechanism e.g. bar biting, pacing, self-mutilation and head bobbing.
What is a unsuitable environment?
An unsuitable environment has a big impact on an animals’ behaviour because if they aren’t receiving the correct care. An inadequate environment effects the mental health of the animals and can result in behaviours such as pacing, self-mutilation, coprophagia, swaying, over- grooming and nutritional pica and more.
What is inappropriate social groupings?
Inappropriate groupings of animals causes many behaviour related problems. For example, if a social species is kept along, they can easily become depressed and lethargic, sometimes resulting in death.
Whereas with solitary species which are kept in pairs or groups can develop high levels of aggression towards other animals and the keeper.
This problem causes various atypical behaviours including self-mutilation, over grooming, heightened aggression, pacing and others.
