Animal Behavior

Behavior: What is it?

❑ Behavior:
▪ Everything an animal does & how it does it

❑ Ethology:
▪ The scientific study of how animals behave,
particularly in their natural environment
Behavioral Ecology
Behavior = everything an animal does & how it does it
◼ INNATE = inherited
◼ LEARNED = develop during animal’s lifetime
Kinds of Behavior

Innate Learned

Imprinting Observational Insight

Instinct Habituation
Learning

Associative
FAP’s Learning

Classical Operant Spatial

Conditioning Conditioning Learning
Innate Behaviors
 Innate behaviors are behaviors that are genetically inherited.
 Behavior influenced by genes can be selected on by natural
selection, so these behaviors should increase the fitness of an
organism in some way.

 Types of Innate Behaviors

◼ Instinct
 EX: In mammals, care for
offspring by female parents is
instinctual
◼ Fixed Action Patterns (FAP)
◼ Imprinting
Fixed Action Patterns
 Follow a regular, unvarying pattern
 Initiated by a specific stimulus
 Behavior is usually always carried out to completion
 Examples:
◼ When a graylag goose sees an egg outside her nest, she
will roll it back into the nest. She will also retrieve any
object that resembles her egg. Even if its removed
completely she’ll go through the motions of moving an
egg back into the nest.
◼ Male stickleback fish defend their territory against other
males. The red belly of males is the stimulus for
aggression. Any object with a red underside will be
attacked.
Fixed Action Pattern (FAP)
 innate
 sequence of unchangeable behaviors
that are usually conducted to
completion once started
 sign stimulus triggers FAP

attack on red belly stimulus

court on swollen belly stimulus
Many ethologists though seem to agree that fixed action patterns are
commonly seen in fight, flight, feeding and reproduction. So let's now take a
look at certain fixed action patterns taking place in dogs.
•Konrad Lorenz claims that urine marking by male dogs is one of them.
Upon smelling the urine of a rival male dog (the sign stimulus), he will
spontaneously lift his leg to urine mark, even when his reservoir of urine is
negligible.
•According to the book "The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing", other
examples of fixed action patterns include the typical circling around ritual
dogs do before laying down. This ancestral behavior thought to have
developed to push down grass and scare off possible snakes and instincts,
is still retained in dogs regardless of where they are sleeping.
1.A behavior independent from learning
2.An instinctive, hard-wired behavior
3.A behavior occurring as a response to an external stimulus known
as sign stimulus or releaser.
4.A behavior produced by a neural pathway known as innate releasing
mechanism
5.A behavior that cannot be changed
6.A behavior that must continue once initiated
7.A behavior difficult to train because it's instinctive and controlled by
primitive neural organization. (Steven Lindsey)
8.The behavior is found throughout the species. Lea (1984)
9.The behaviors are adaptive responses, meaning that they have helped
the species cope with certain environmental aspects.
Imprinting
 An innate program for acquiring a specific behavior
 Requires an appropriate stimulus during the critical period
 Once acquired, the behavior is irreversible
 Examples:
◼ In the first two days of life, graylag goslings will
accept any moving object as their mother for life.
Even a real mother introduced after the critical
period will be rejected
Imprinting
 Salmon hatch in freshwater streams and
migrate to the ocean to eat. When they are
ready to mate, they return to their birthplace
to breed, identifying the exact location of the
stream. During early life, they imprint the
odors of their birthplace.
Imprinting
 Both innate & learning components
 Learning at a specific critical time
Imprinting
 Imprinting for conservation:
 Conservation biologists have taken advantage of imprinting
by young whooping cranes as a means to teach the birds a
migration route.
 A pilot wearing a crane suit in an ultra light plane acts as a
surrogate parent. Crane handlers wear special
suits to prevent the cranes
from imprinting on humans
Imprinting
 Imprinting for conservation:
Crane handlers wear special suits to prevent the cranes from imprinting on
humans
Learned Behaviors
 Behaviors acquired through a process of
learning
 Types of Behavioral Learning
◼ Associative Learning
◼ Habituation
◼ Observational Learning
◼ Insight
Associative Learning
 When an animal learns that two events are connected.
◼ EX: Dog learns that the smell/sight of food leads to
eating (they will then begin to salivate)
 Types of Associative Learning
◼ Classical Conditioning
◼ Operant Conditioning
◼ Spatial Learning
Classical
Conditioning
 A form of A.L. in which
an animal responds to a
substitute stimulus
 Classical Conditioning or say respondent
conditioning is a learning technique in which
the experimenter learns the relation between
two stimuli, that precedes the natural
response. It indicates that the occurrence of
one stimulus signals the possible occurrence
of another.
 Classical conditioning was coined by Ivan
Petrovich Pavlov, who was a Russian
Physiologist. It assumes that an organism
learns something, through his/her interaction
with the environment, that tends to mould the
behaviour and the state of mind.
The components of classical conditioning are:
 US or Unconditioned Stimulus: The stimulus that causes the
organism to react unconditionally or naturally.
 UR or Unconditioned Response: Occurs naturally when the
unconditioned stimulus is offered or displayed.
 CS or Conditioned Stimulus: The stimulus that causes one
to react to something as it is associated with something else.
 CR or Conditioned Response: It is a learned response, to a
neutral stimulus.
Classical Conditioning
 Type of associative learning
 Stimulus & reward/punishment
 Ex: Ivan Pavlov’s dogs
Operant
Conditioning
 Also known as trial and error learning
 Occurs when an animal connects its own
behavior with a particular response.
 This is how we train animals- positive and negative
reinforcement.
 Operant conditioning is a method of learning
that occurs through rewards and punishments
for behavior.
 Through operant conditioning, an individual
makes an association between a particular
behavior and a consequence (Skinner, 1938)
 Operant conditioning involves learning
through the consequences of behavior.
Operant conditioning

mouse learns to associate behavior (pressing lever)

with reward (food pellet)
Types of operant or responses
 • Neutral operants: responses from the environment that
neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behavior
being repeated.

 • Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase

the probability of a behavior being repeated. Reinforcers can
be either positive or negative.

 • Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease

the likelihood of a behavior being repeated. Punishment
weakens behavior.
Reinforcement
 Positive Reinforcement: Presenting the
subject with something that it likes.
e.g., Skinner rewarded his rats with food pellets.
 Negative Reinforcement: Reward – in the
sense of removing or avoiding some aversive
(painful) stimulus.

 E.g., Skinner's rats learned to press the lever

in order to switch off the electric current in
the cage.
Punishment
 Imposing an aversive or painful stimulus.

 e.g., Skinner’s rats were given electric shocks.

Effect of punishment
 There are many problems with using punishment, such as:
Punished behavior is not forgotten, it's suppressed - behavior
returns when punishment is no longer present.
 Causes increased aggression - shows that aggression is a way
to cope with problems.
 Creates fear that can generalize to undesirable behaviors, e.g.,
fear of school.
 Does not necessarily guide toward desired behavior -
reinforcement tells you what to do, punishment only tells you
what not to do.
Spatial Learning

Spatial learning refers to the process through which animals encode information

about their environment to facilitate navigation through space and recall the location

of motivationally relevant stimuli.

This form of learning is critically dependent on the integrity of the hippocampus,

although surrounding regions of the temporal cortex and certain forebrain structures

also play a role in these processes.

◼ Tinbergen observed wasps using pinecone
markers to return to their nests. If the markers
were removed, wasps could not find the nest.
Habituation
 It allows an animal to disregard a meaningless
stimuli
◼ The stimuli in question triggers an innate behavior,
not a learned one (different from extinction)
 Example:
◼ Sea anemones pull food into their mouths. If they
are stimulated repeatedly with non-food items
(sticks, for example) they will then begin to ignore
the stimulus.
Observational
Learning
 Occurs when animals copy
the behavior of another animal.
any previous + reinforcement of the behavior
 Example:
◼ Japanese monkeys usually remove sand from food by
brushing them with their hands. One monkey discovered that
dipping food in water more easily rid the food of sand.
Through observational learning, many of the other monkeys
began to use water to clean their food.
Observational learning
 Young chimpanzees who watch their mothers
crack nuts with rock tools before learning the
technique themselves
Insight
 When an animal, exposed to a totally new situation
and without prior experience or observation,
performs a behavior that generates a desirable
outcome.
 Example
◼ A chimpanzee placed in a
room with food beyond their
reach will stack boxes up to get
to the food.
Animal Movement
 Three types of animal movement
1) Kinesis
2) Taxis
3) Migration
Animal Movement
 Kinesis- undirected change in activity level/turning rate
of animal in response to a stimulus.
 Taxis- directed movement towards or away from a
stimulus.
◼ Phototaxis is movement towards light, chemotaxis is towards
a chemical.
◼ Example: moths fly towards light.
 Migration- long distance, seasonal movements to find
food or better environmental conditions.
◼ Example: whales, birds, elk, insects, and bats all move to
warmer climates during the winter.
Kinesis
 Seemingly random change in the speed of a movement in
response to a stimulus
 When an organism is in a place that it enjoys, it slows down,
and when in a bad environment, it speeds up. Overall this
leads to an organisms spending more time in favorable
environments
 Ex: Pillbugs – (AP Lab 11) pillbugs prefer moist
environments
Taxis
 A reflex movement towards (positive taxis) or away (negative
taxis) from a stimulus
Migration
 Complex behavior, but still under genetic control –
cyclic movement of animals over long distances
according to the time of year
Bird Migration – Migrating Sandpipers
Animal Communication
Animals communicate in many
ways…communication need not always be vocal
➢ Chemical communication
➢ Visual communication
➢ Auditory communication
➢ Tactile communication
Animal Communication
 Chemical- pheromones are chemical animals secrete to
communicate.
◼ Example: ants mark their trail, urine spraying, primer pheromones in
queen bees and termites
 Visual- animals will make displays to show aggression or
courtship.
◼ Example: Wolves will threaten each other by showing their teeth or
show submission by lying on their backs
 Auditory- making sounds.
◼ Example: frog calls, whale songs
 Tactile- touching
◼ Example: Monkeys will groom each other, wolves will greet
dominant males with a lick
Chemical communication
Trail pheromones - ants
– Pheromones
Alarm pheromones
Sex pheromones
Trail pheromones
Alarm pheromones - minnows

Sex pheromones - insects

Visual Communication
 Communication through the use of visual cues

 Ex: Tail feather displays of male peacocks

Tactile communication
 Communication through the use of touch
 A major form of primate tactile
communication is grooming

A subordinate monkey grooming a dominant monkey.

Auditory Communication
 Bird song:  Insect Song:
 Mixed learned and innate  Innate, genetically controlled
 Most have a critical learning  Frogs croaking in the spring
period

Red winged blackbird

Honeybee Communication
 Bees provide an example of communication that involves
chemical, tactile, and auditory components.
 Bees do a “waggle dance” to communicate location of food
 Dance provides distance and directional cues
 Chemical clues – regurgitation of food source provides
information “what kind of food”
Foraging Behaviors
 Feeding: Goal is to maximize amount of food eaten while
minimizing energy used and risk of injury or attack
 Herds, Flocks, & Schools provide advantages:
◼ Concealment: Most individuals are hidden in the middle.
◼ Vigilance - Individuals can trade off foraging and watching for predators-
two eyes are better than one!
◼ Defense
 Packs
◼ Cooperation in catching prey
 Search images
◼ Learning to search for an abbreviated image of the target or goal
 EX: searching for a book, seeing a cop car
Social Behaviors
 Agonistic Behaviors- specific aggressive and submissive ritualized
behaviors that exist to establish dominance hierarchy but minimize
injury
 Dominance hierarchies- where there is a pecking order indicating
status and power
◼ Minimizes fighting for food and mates
 Territoriality- defending an area for food and/or mating.
 Altruism- seemingly unselfish, fitness-lowering behaviors where an
organism helps another animal.
◼ Usually occurs between relatives. This is called kin selection
 Leads to inclusive fitness (the fitness of the group with similar genes)
 EX: Belding’s ground squirrels give alarm calls when predators are near. This
risks that squirrels safety but protects the group, which not coincidentally, is
made of closely related females
Animal Social Behaviors
Agonistic behavior:
▪ Results from conflict over resources
▪ Often involves intimidation and submission
▪ Often a matter of which animal can mount the most
threatening display and scare the other into
submission (symbolic: ususually no harm done)
Animal Social Behaviors
Dominance Hierarchies:
 Dominance hierarchies involve a ranking of individuals in a group (a
“pecking order”). Alpha and beta rankings exist, the alpha organisms control
.
the behavior of others
▪ Member with most power “alpha”
▪ Second in command “beta”
▪ Benefit: Less energy wasted over conflicts over food and
resources
A submissive chimpanzee
lets the dominant (alpha)
chimpanzee know that he or
she is not a threat through
non-threatening postures
such as presenting their
back, crouching and bowing
Animal Social Behaviors
Territoriality
▪ Animals defend a physical geographic area against
other individuals
▪ Area is defended because of benefits derived from it:
food, mates, etc
▪ Animal species vary in their degree of territoriality

Nesting in birds
Animal Social Behaviors
Altruistic Behavior
▪ Sometimes one animal in the group will do something to increase the
survival of another at the potential cost to its own fitness or survival. This
behavior is known as altruism.
▪ altruism refers to behaviour by an individual that increases the fitness of
another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor.
▪ Altruism is performed to better the survival potential of the group rather
than the individual.
▪ Altruistic behaviours appear most obviously in kin relationships, such as in
parenting, but may also be evident among wider social groups, such as in
social insects. They allow an individual to increase the success of its genes
by helping relatives that share those genes.
▪ When an altruistic act is performed for a member of one's own family it is
called kin selection. This increases the reproductive fitness (survival) of
future generations.
Animal Social Behaviors
Inclusive fitness:
▪ Represents the overall ability of individuals to pass
their own genes on to the next generation as well
as providing aid to closely related individuals
(related individuals share many of the same genes)

▪ This concept can explain many cases of altruism in

nature
Animal Social Behavior
Reciprocal altruism:
▪ Animals behave altruistically toward others who
are not relatives, hoping that the favor will be
returned sometime in the future.

▪ Animals rarely display this behavior…it is

limited to species with stable social groups
Animal Social Behavior
Optimal foraging:
▪ Natural selection favors those who choose
foraging strategies that maximize the differential
between costs and benefits.

▪ If the effort involved in obtaining food outweighs

the nutritive value of the food, forget about it.