Transcript Get out your Animal Behavior WebQuest for LT #2

You need your Animal Behavior Web Quest!
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Is the study of animal behavior with special
attention to the natural environment and
physiological, evolutionary aspects.
AKA the study of animal behavior in their
natural surroundings
◦ Knowledge of animal behavior is essential to
understanding the whole animal and its ability to
adapt to various situations.
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The actions or reactions of a person or
animal in response to external or internal
stimuli.
 AKA is the way an organisms interacts
with other organisms in its environment.
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◦ Animals are different from one another in
their behavior. They are born with certain
behaviors, and they learn others.
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Your dog barks and wags its tail as you
scratch behind its ears. Sitting at your feet,
it watches every move you make.
Why do dogs do these things? In nature,
dogs are pack animals that generally follow
a leader. They have been living with people
for about 12,000 years. Domesticated dogs
treat people as part of their own pack.
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Behavior is very broadly defined as the
way an animal acts. Any action an
animal does, or any response to a
stimulus is a behavior.
 Blinking, eating, walking, running, and
flying all are examples of behaviors.
Stimulus
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Any change in an organism’s environment
that causes the organism to react. “cause”
 AKA anything in the environment that causes a
reaction.
 Stimulus (singular) Stimuli (plural)
Response
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How the organism reacts to a stimulus and
results in a change in behavior. “effect”
 AKA a reaction to a change in their
environment.
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A rabbit gets scared so it runs away.
You are cold so you put on a jacket.
A dog is hot so it lies in the shade.
It starts raining so you take out an umbrella.
You are hungry so you eat some food.
You walk in and your dog starts to bark and wag his
tail.
Getting a drink when you are thirsty.
The snake moved into the sun because it was cold.
 External
stimuli: a stimulus that
comes from outside an
organism
 Examples:
 Changes in: amount of daylight, temperature,
sound, amount of water, space, types of food
 Internal
stimuli: a stimulus that
comes from inside an organism
◦ Example:
 Hunger, Thirst, and Feeling Sleepy
A cat feels thirsty so it drinks water.
 A snake lunges at a rabbit so it runs
away.
 A dog get hot because the temp rises so
it goes to lay in the shade.
 It starts raining so you take out an
umbrella.
 You are hungry so you eat some food.
 You see a DQ commercial for a blizzard
so you decide to go buy one.
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A behavior that a organism is born with.
◦ These types of behaviors are inherited.
◦ They don’t have to be learned.
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Innate behavior patterns occur the first time an
animal responds to a particular internal or
external stimulus.
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Behavior of animals that have short life spans is
mostly innate behavior.
Most insects do not learn from parents because most
parents have died or moved on.
Yet every insect reacts innately to it environment.
A moth will fly toward light, and a cockroach will run
away from it. They don’t learn this behavior. Innate
behavior allows animals to respond instantly.
This quick response often means the difference
between life and death.
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Reflexes: simplest innate behavior, an
automatic response that does not involve a
message from the brain.
Examples: blinking, shivering, yawning,
sneezing, etc.
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A complex pattern of innate behavior. Unlike
reflexes, instinctive behaviors can take up to two
weeks to complete.
Instinctive behavior begins when the animal
recognizes a stimulus and continues until all parts of
the behavior have been performed.
◦ Ex: Spinning a web is complicated, yet spiders spin webs correctly
on the first try.
◦ Ex: When it’s time for the female weaverbird to lay eggs, the male
weaverbird builds an elaborate nest. Although a young male’s first
attempt may be messy, the nest is constructed correctly.
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Develops during an animal’s lifetime. Is the
result of learning. Learning is the result of
experience.
AKA a behavior that an organism must learn.
Allows animals to respond to changing
situations.
Animals with more complex brains exhibit more
behaviors that are a result of learning.
◦ Ex: As they grow older, these quail chicks will learn
which organisms to avoid.
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Occurs when an animal forms a social
attachment to an other organism within a
specific time period after birth or hatching.
◦ Ex: Gosling and ducklings follow the first moving
object it sees after hatching. The moving object,
whatever it is, is imprinted as its parent.
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Behavior modified by experience. Many animals
learn by trial and error.
◦ Ex: When baby chicks first try to feed themselves, they
peck at many stones before they get any food. As a
result of trial and error, they learn to peck only at food
particles.
◦ Ex: When you first try to dribble a basketball, you end
up chasing after the ball many times before you get it
right. You eventually learn by trial and error (practice)
how to dribble.
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Behavior is modified so that a response to one
stimulus becomes associated with a different
stimulus.
◦ Ex: Fish swim to the top of the tank when they see a
hand because they think it means food.
◦ Ex: Raccoons will run to a feeder when it hears it run
even if it is out of corn because it has associated the
sound of the feeder with food.
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One type introduces a new stimulus before the
usual stimulus.
◦ Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov performed experiments
using this type. He knew that the sight and smell of
food made hungry dogs secrete saliva. Pavlov added
another stimulus. He rang a bell before he fed the
dogs. The dogs began to connect the sound of the
bell with food. Then Pavlov rang the bell without
giving the dogs food. They salivated when the bell
was run even though he did not give them food.
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The other type of conditioning is when the new
stimulus is given after the affected behavior.
◦ Getting an allowance for doing chores is an example of
this type of conditioning. You do your chores because
you want to receive your allowance. You have been
conditioned to perform an activity that you may not
have done if you had not been offered a reward.
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A form of reasoning that allows animals to use
past experiences to solve new problems.
◦ Ex: Doing an new math problem, you use what you
have learned previously in math to solve problems. If
you use what you have learned, then you have used a
kind of learned behavior called insight.
◦ Much of adult human learning is based on insight.
When you were a baby, you learned by trial and error.
As you grow older, you will rely more on insight.
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When something doesn’t pose a threat to our
safety, we get use to it. We learn to just put up
with the harmless stimuli rather than waste our
energy reacting to it.
When an animal is repeatedly exposed to stimuli
that neither hurts nor helps, it stops responding.
◦ Ex: A chipmunk in a park would eventually get use to
human footsteps, so that they will not run away every
time.
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Prairie dogs give alarm calls when mammals, large
birds, or snakes approach. Individual prairie dogs
are particularly susceptible to becoming food for a
coyote, hawk, or rattlesnake, but as a group they
are fairly well-defended, as their alarm calls make
it easy to escape in burrows.
◦ When prairie dog towns are located near trails used by
humans, giving alarm calls every time a person walks by is
a waste of time and energy for the group. Habituation to
humans is an important adaptation in this context.
 To
find food
 To interact in social groups
 To avoid predators
 To reproduce
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Animal behaviors usually are strategies for survival.
Some behaviors, such as eating, or escaping
predators are obvious survival strategies.
But other behaviors, which also are important for
survival, may not be as easily understood.
◦ For example, a flamingo standing on one leg, holding
the other close to its body, is exhibiting heat regulation
behavior. By tucking its leg close to its body, the bird
conserves heat that would otherwise escape from the
exposed leg.