1. Animal Behavior

2. Outline: What is the study of Animal Behavior?
Why do we study Animal Behavior?
History of modern Animal Behavior.

3. What is Animal Behavior?
-response to stimuli
-external vs. internal

4. Intraspecific interactions (within a species) Mate choice/ courtship
Some examples of animal behavior:
Intraspecific interactions
(within a species)
Mate choice/ courtship
Male competition
Alarm calls
Parental care
Peck-order/ dominance
Territoriality

5. Interspecific interactions (between different species) Predation
Some examples of animal behavior:
Interspecific interactions
(between different species)
Predation
Symbiosis
Competition

6. Study of Animal Behavior:
The study of how and why animals interact with each other (both within and among species) and their environment.

7. Understanding Causes of Animal Behavior
Proximate questions – how (physiology)
mechanisms responsible for interactions
-relationship between genes & behavior?
-hereditary trait?
-stimuli?
Ultimate questions - why (evolutionarily)
how these interactions influence an individual's survival and reproduction
-did this behavior evolve & why?
-what is the purpose or function?
-what is the adaptive value?

8. Why study animal behavior?
Possible first science: Our survival dependent on knowledge of other animals (prey/competitors/predators).
Control/management of species: Food and game species, agricultural pests, invasive species, endangered species, relocation of species, zoo/ farm/ lab animals’ habitats

9. Why study animal behavior?
Advance technology: Sonar in bats have led to applications for sonar (ex. military or ultrasound)
Understanding/modification of our own behavior? -Studies of how birds learn and develop songs provide unique insights into the development and neural control of speech in humans.
-Circadian rhythms in animals can help us understand jet-lag or shift work.

10. Why else study animal behavior?
Curiosity
Science for science’s sake
Achieve a better understanding of the species we share the Earth with
Almost any behavior performed by any animal may be interesting to study.

11. History of the study of animal behavior
Paleolithic art from 40,000+ years ago provide indirect evidence that primitive humans observed the behavior of animals.
Cave paintings portray herding animals in groups, animal migration, certain predators hunting in packs, and solitary animals alone.

12. Charles Darwin
Realized that traits related directly to mate acquisition and mate choice, were distinctly different from other traits under natural selection (e.g., foraging ability). He coined the term sexual selection to emphasize the distinction between the two processes.
Sexual Selection “…depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to propagation of the species...”
Charles Darwin 1871

13. How do we often interpret
animal behavior?
Anthropomorphism - giving of human characteristics to nonhuman organisms
Shirley Strum determined that baboons had female dominated societies

14. History of modern animal behavior research
C. O. Whitman (1800's) coined the term instinct to describe the display patterns of pigeons.

15. Many instincts are triggered by stimuli (from the environment or other animals).
Jakob von Uexkull ( ) called triggers of instinctive stereotyped behaviors sign stimuli . (Believed that we needed to think like the animal - not anthropomorphize).
Example:
tick – how do behaviors help get a blood meal?

16. Immature females are at first only sensitive to light (not touch)
Immature females are at first only sensitive to light (not touch). They crawl towards light, which elevates her off the ground (on a tip of grass).
Example:
tick – how do behaviors help get a blood meal?

17. Then the tick is only sensitive to butyric acid, which mammals produce
Then the tick is only sensitive to butyric acid, which mammals produce. When she senses butyric acid, she drops.
Example:
tick – how do behaviors help get a blood meal?

18. Next the tick is only sensitive to temperature, no longer chemical or visual cues. She will burrow into any warm surface, and will suck any warm liquid, having no sense of taste.
Example:
tick – how do behaviors help get a blood meal?

19. Sign stimuli Light Butyric acid Heat
“The whole rich world around the tick shrinks into a scanty framework consisting … of three receptor cues – her Umwelt.”
Jakob von Uexkull
Sign stimuli
Light
Butyric acid
Heat

20. Behaviorism
A group of scientists focused on the mechanistic underpinnings of behavior – John Watson, Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner.
This research used model organisms (e.g., Norway rat) in controlled laboratory settings.

21. Behaviorism B.F. Skinner
( )
Experimental studies of behavior in the laboratory, using manipulation
Find “universal principles” of behavior

22. Classic work on operant conditioning (trial-by-error) by B. F. Skinner
The Skinner Box remains an important tool in the field of animal psychology.

23. Founders of the field Ethology
Niko
Tinbergen
Konrad Lorenz
Karl
von Frisch
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973
"for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns"

24. Ethology:
The study of the evolution and functional significance of behavior.
Objective description of behavior in the field, using observation.

25. Ethology
Behavior is sterotyped – different individuals of a species show same behavior.
Behavior is innate, developed through natural selection.

26. Ethology Questions
1. What is the behavior? (What is the fixed- action pattern)?
2. What is the behavior good for? (What is the adaptive value)?
3. What triggers the behavior? (What is the releasing/sign stimuli)?
4. What are the physiological mechanisms that led to the behavior?
Also – what role learning plays in the behavior.?

27. Ethology Q Example
1. FAP – goose extends neck to roll back an egg that fell out of nest
2. adaptive value – keeps egg/gosling alive, protects young
3. environmental signal – egg out of nest
4. mechanism – sensory mechanism that detects the sign stimuli – part of the nervous system

28. Niko Tinbergen (1907-1988) formulated a method studying animal behavior (Tinbergen, 1963)
His approach had a strong Darwinian influence: understand the ultimate (evolutionary) reasons for behavior.
Demonstrated that digger wasps used
visual landmarks to relocate their nests.

29. Niko Tinbergen
Stickleback fish courtship – complex series of events
Male preparation:
Color change
Emphasis on body size for defense of territory
Builds nest
Communication:
Egg-laden female nears, male zigzags
“dance” together
Eggs laid in nest, external fertilization
Male cares for offspring

30. Niko Tinbergen Stickleback fish
What is important for successful courtship?

31. Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) examined genetically programmed behaviors in young and imprinting.
Young geese form an image of “parent” just after hatching. If the hatchlings first encounter a human, they will imprint on him and follow him around as if he were their mother.

32. Imprinting
Learning based on early experience
Limited to specific time period
Generally irreversible
Innate
External stimulus
Identifying ‘mom’ can also lead to recognition of littermates – kin discrimination.
Konrad Lorenz & goslings – geese sometimes showed courtship behavior towards humans.

33. Karl von Frisch (1886 - 1982), pioneered studies in bee communication and foraging.
Honey bees use a dance language to communicate the location of resources to other bees – intensity (distance), angle to sun (direction), sound, odor are involved.
Demonstrated that honey bees have color vision.

34. A -- Animal refers to the organisms.
B -- Behavior refers to the observable actions of the organism.
C -- Causation refers to the proximate causes of behavior such as genes, hormones, and nerve impulses that control the expression of behaviors.
D -- Development refers to the ontogeny of behaviors such as imprinting, or in the case of cognition, learning.
E -- Evolution refers to the phylogenetic context in which behaviors are found. For example, the prevalence of parental care in birds, but not reptiles (with some exceptions) is an example of the taxonomic affiliations of some behaviors.
F -- Function refers to the adaptive value or contribution that the behavior makes to fitness.
(from B. Sinervo UCSC)

35. The Debate on Nature versus Nurture
What influences behavior - genes or environment?
There is no simple answer, we need to examine the complex interaction between genes and the environment.