1. Animal Behavior
meerkats

2. What is behavior? Behavior everything an animal does & how it does it
response to stimuli in its environment
innate
inherited, “instinctive”
automatic & consistent
learned
ability to learn is inherited, but the behavior develops during animal’s lifetime
variable & flexible
change with experience & environment

3. Why study behavior? Evolutionary perspective… part of phenotype
acted upon by natural selection
lead to greater fitness?
lead to greater survival?
lead to greater reproductive success?

4. Evolutionary perspective
Adaptive advantage?
innate behaviors
automatic, fixed, “built-in”, no “learning curve”
despite different environments, all individuals exhibit the behavior
ex. early survival, reproduction, kinesis, taxis
learned behaviors
modified by experience
variable, changeable
flexible with a complex & changing environment

5. male sticklebacks exhibit aggressive territoriality
Innate behaviors
Fixed action patterns (FAP)
sequence of behaviors essentially unchangeable & usually conducted to completion once started
sign stimulus
the releaser that triggers a FAP
attack on red belly stimulus
court on swollen belly stimulus

6. Fixed Action Patterns (FAP)
Digger wasp
egg rolling in geese
Do humans exhibit Fixed Action Patterns? This question was addressed by Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Hans Hass who worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Behavioural Physiology in Germany. They created a Film Archive of Human Ethology of unstaged and minimally disturbed social behaviour.
They filmed people across a wide range of cultures with a right-angle reflex lens camera i.e. the subjects did not realize that they were being filmed because the camera lens did not appear to be pointing at them! Eibl-Eibesfeldt has identified and recorded on film, several human Fixed Action Patterns or human 'universals' e.g. smiling and the "eyebrow-flash"
Eibl-Eibesfeldt took these pictures of a Himba woman from Namibia (SW-Africa). She shows a rapid brow raising (between the second and third still images) which coincides with raising her eyelids. Because all the cultures he examined showed this behaviour, Eibl-Eibesfeldt concluded that it was a human 'universal' or Fixed Action Pattern.
Some Sphex wasps drop a paralyzed insect near the opening of the nest. Before taking provisions into the nest, the sphex first inspects the nest, leaving the prey outside. During the sphex's inspection of the nest an experimenter can move the prey a few inches away from the opening of the nest. When the sphex emerges from the nest ready to drag in the prey, it finds the prey missing. The sphex quickly locates the moved prey, but now its behavioral "program" has been reset. After dragging the prey back to the opening of the nest, once again the sphex is compelled to inspect the nest, so the prey is again dropped and left outside during another stereotypical inspection of the nest. This iteration can be repeated again and again, with the sphex never seeming to notice what is going on, never able to escape from its genetically-programmed sequence of behaviors. Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett have used this mechanistic behavior as an example of how seemingly thoughtful behavior can actually be quite mindless, the opposite of human behavioral flexibility that we experience as free will
Do humans exhibit Fixed Action Patterns?
The “eyebrow-flash”

7. Innate: Directed movements
Taxis
change in direction
automatic movement toward (positive taxis) or away from (negative taxis) a stimulus
phototaxis
chemotaxis
Kinesis
change in rate of movement in response to a stimulus
The sow bugs become more active in dry areas and less active in humid areas. Though sow bugs do not move toward or away from specific conditions, their increased movement under dry conditions increases the chance that they will leave a dry area and encounter a moist area. And since they slow down in a moist area, they tend to stay there once they encounter it.
In contrast to a kinesis, a taxis is a more or less automatic, oriented movement toward (a positive taxis) or away from (a negative taxis) some stimulus. For example, many stream fish, such as trout, exhibit positive rheotaxis (from the Greek rheos, current); they automatically swim or orient themselves in an upstream direction (toward the current). This taxis keeps the fish from being swept away and keeps them facing the direction from which food will come.

8. Complex Innate behaviors
Migration
“migratory restlessness” seen in birds bred & raised in captivity
navigate by sun, stars, Earth magnetic fields
Sandpiper
Monarch
migration
Bird migration, a behavior that is largely under genetic control. Each spring, migrating western sandpipers (Calidris mauri), such as those shown here, migrate from their wintering grounds, which may be as far south as Peru, to their breeding grounds in Alaska. In the autumn, they return to the wintering grounds.
Bobolink
Golden plover
ancient fly-ways

9. Innate & Learning: Imprinting
Learning to form social attachments at a specific critical period
both learning & innate components
But how do the young know on whom—or what—to imprint? How do young geese know that they should follow the mother goose? The tendency to respond is innate in the birds; the outside world provides the imprinting stimulus, something to which the response will be directed. Experiments with many species of waterfowl indicate that they have no innate recognition of “mother.” They respond to and identify with the first object they encounter that has certain key characteristics. In classic experiments done in the 1930s, Konrad Lorenz showed that the most important imprinting stimulus in graylag geese is movement of an object away from the young. When incubator–hatched goslings spent their first few hours with Lorenz rather than with a goose, they imprinted on him, and from then on, they steadfastly followed him and showed no recognition of their biological mother or other adults of their own species. Again, there are both proximate and ultimate explanations
Konrad Lorenz

10. 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 Ultralight plane acts as a surrogate parent.
Wattled crane conservation
teaching cranes to migrate
Cranes also imprint as hatchlings, creating both problems and opportunities in captive rearing programs designed to save endangered crane species. For instance, a group of 77 endangered whooping cranes hatched and raised by sandhill cranes imprinted on the sandhill foster parents; none of these whooping cranes ever formed a mating pair–bond with another whooping crane. As a consequence, captive breeding programs now isolate young cranes and expose them to the sights and sounds of members of their own species. But imprinting can also be used to aid crane conservation
Young whooping cranes imprinted on humans in “crane suits” have been taught to follow these “parents” flying ultralight aircraft along new migration routes. And importantly, such cranes have formed mating pair–bonds with other whooping cranes.

11. Critical period Sensitive phase for optimal imprinting
some behavior must be learned during a receptive time period
As a brood parasite, the Cuckoo never learn the song of their species as a nestling. Song development is totally innate.
imprinting/critical period in humans?

12. Learned behavior Associative learning
learning to associate a stimulus with a consequence
operant conditioning
trial & error learning
associate behavior with reward or punishment
ex: learning what to eat
classical conditioning
Pavlovian conditioning
associate a “neutral stimulus” with a “significant stimulus”

13. Operant conditioning Skinner box
mouse learns to associate behavior (pressing lever) with reward (food pellet)

14. Classical conditioning
Ivan Pavlov’s dogs
connect reflex behavior (salivating at sight of food) to associated stimulus (ringing bell)

15. Learning: Habituation
Loss of response to stimulus
“cry-wolf” effect
decrease in response to repeated occurrences of stimulus
enables animals to disregard unimportant stimuli
ex: falling leaves not triggering fear response in baby birds

16. Learning: Problem-solving
Do other animals reason?
crow
chimpanzee
problem-solving
sea otter
tool use

17. Social behaviors Interactions between individuals
develop as evolutionary adaptations
communication / language
agonistic behaviors
dominance hierarchy
cooperation
altruistic behavior

18. Let’s go to the videotape!
Language
Honey bee communication
dance to communicate location of food source
waggle dance
View Waggle Dance AVI file: waggledance180x135.avi

19. Communication by song Bird song Insect song
species identification & mating ritual
mixed learned & innate
critical learning period
Insect song
mating ritual & song
innate, genetically controlled
Red-winged blackbird

20. Let’s go to the videotape!
Social behaviors
Agonistic behaviors
threatening & submissive rituals
symbolic, usually no harm done
ex: territoriality, competitor aggression
View Lifewire territoriality video: “lizards cost of defending-lifewire.swf”
Review setting up a behavior experiment:
Let’s go to the videotape!

21. Social behaviors Dominance hierarchy social ranking within a group
pecking order

22. Social behaviors Cooperation working together in coordination
Pack of African dogs hunting wildebeest cooperatively
White pelicans “herding” school of fish

23. I would lay down my life for 2 brothers or 8 cousins!
Social behaviors
Altruistic behavior
reduces individual fitness but increases fitness of recipient
kin selection
increasing survival of close relatives passes these genes on to the next generation
I would lay down my life for 2 brothers or 8 cousins!
How can this be of adaptive value?
Belding ground squirrel

24. Social interaction requires communication
Pheromones
chemical signal that stimulates a response from other individuals
alarm pheromones
sex pheromones

25. Pheromones human sex pheromone?
Female mosquito use CO2 concentrations to locate victims
marking territory
Spider using moth sex pheromones, as allomones, to lure its prey
The female lion lures male by spreading sex pheromones, but also by posture & movements
The luring function of sex pheromones is a perfect way for predators to get heir prey without having to work too hard. The spider Mastophora hutchinsoni spreads sex pheromones of moths, using them as allomones. This way he can lure about enough moths to sustain. When the moths fly in, convinced they are about to mate, the spider shoots a sticky ball on wire towards them. As they stick to the ball, he drags them in and eats them.

26. Any Questions??