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Biology
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34-1 Elements of Behavior
Photo Credit: ©OSF/LILLIE, Peter/Animals Animals Enterprises
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Stimulus and Response
Stimulus and Response
Biologists define behavior as the way an organism reacts to changes in its internal condition or external environment.
A behavior can be simple or complex.
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Stimulus and Response
Behaviors are performed when an animal reacts to a stimulus.
A stimulus is any kind of signal that carries information and can be detected.
For example, hunger is an internal stimulus that may prompt you to eat. The sound of a ringing phone is a stimulus that may prompt you to answer the phone.
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Stimulus and Response
A single, specific reaction to a stimulus is called a response.
A behavior may consist of more than one response.
For example, a shark may respond to the movement of prey by swimming toward the prey and attacking it.
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Stimulus and Response
Types of Stimuli
Animals respond to many types of stimuli, such as light, sound, odors, and heat.
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Stimulus and Response
What produces behavior in animals?
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Stimulus and Response
How Animals Respond
When an animal responds to a stimulus, its body systems—including the sense organs, nervous system, and muscles—interact to produce the resultant behavior.
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Stimulus and Response
Once the senses detect an external stimulus, information is passed along nerve cells to the brain.
The brain and nervous system process the information, and direct the response.
Animals with simple nervous systems have simple behaviors.
Animals with complex nervous systems have more complicated and precise behaviors.
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10. Behavior and Evolution
Animal behavior is important to survival and reproduction.
Many behaviors are influenced by genes and can be inherited.
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11. Behavior and Evolution
Behaviors may evolve under the influence of natural selection.
Organisms with an adaptive behavior will survive and reproduce better than organisms that lack the behavior.
After natural selection has operated for many generations, most individuals will exhibit the adaptive behavior.
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Innate Behavior
What is an innate behavior?
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Innate Behavior
Innate Behavior
An innate behavior is an instinct, or inborn behavior.
Innate behaviors appear in fully functional form the first time they are performed, even though the animal may have had no previous experience with the stimuli to which it responds.
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Innate Behavior
Examples of innate behavior:
the suckling of a newborn mammal
the weaving of a spider web
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Innate Behavior
Innate behaviors depend on internal mechanisms that develop from complex interactions between an animal's genes and its environment.
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Learned Behavior
What are the major types of learning?
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Learned Behavior
Learned Behavior
Many animals can alter their behavior based on experience. A change in behavior that results from experience is called learning.
Learning is also called acquired behavior.
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Learned Behavior
The four major types of learning are:
habituation
classical conditioning
operant conditioning
insight learning
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Learned Behavior
Habituation 
Habituation is a process by which an animal decreases or stops its response to a repetitive stimulus that neither rewards nor harms it.
For example, a worm may stop responding to the shadow of something that neither provides the worm with food nor threatens it.
By ignoring a nonthreatening or unrewarding stimulus, animals can spend their time and energy more efficiently.
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Learned Behavior
Classical Conditioning 
Any time an animal makes a mental connection between a stimulus and some kind of reward or punishment, it has learned by classical conditioning.
An example of classical conditioning is the work of Pavlov and his dog. (Pavlov's experiment is shown on the next few slides.)
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Learned Behavior
Before Conditioning
When a dog sees or smells food, it produces saliva.
Food is the stimulus and the dog’s response is salivation.
Dogs do not usually salivate in response to nonfood stimuli.
Ivan Pavlov taught his dog to expect food whenever a bell was rung. Pavlov’s experiment is an example of classical conditioning, one of the four major types of learning.
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Learned Behavior
2. During Conditioning
By ringing a bell every time he fed the dog, Pavlov trained the dog to associate the sight and smell of food with the ringing bell.
Ivan Pavlov taught his dog to expect food whenever a bell was rung. Pavlov’s experiment is an example of classical conditioning, one of the four major types of learning.
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Learned Behavior
3. After Conditioning
When Pavlov rang a bell in the absence of food, the dog still salivated.
The dog was conditioned to salivate in response to a stimulus that it did not normally associate with food.
Ivan Pavlov taught his dog to expect food whenever a bell was rung. Pavlov’s experiment is an example of classical conditioning, one of the four major types of learning.
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Learned Behavior
Operant Conditioning 
Operant conditioning occurs when an animal learns to behave in a certain way through repeated practice, in order to receive a reward or avoid punishment.
Operant conditioning is also called trial-and-error learning.
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Learned Behavior
Operant conditioning was first described by B. F. Skinner.
Skinner invented a testing procedure using a “Skinner box.”
A Skinner box has a colored button that, when pressed, delivers a food reward.
After an animal is rewarded several times, it learns that it gets food whenever it presses the button.
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Learned Behavior
Insight Learning 
Insight learning, or reasoning, occurs when an animal applies something it has already learned to a new situation, without a period of trial and error.
Insight learning is common among humans and primates.
If you are given a math problem on an exam, you use insight learning in order to solve it.
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27. Instinct and Learning Combined
Most behaviors are a combination of instinct and learning.
Young white-crowned sparrows have an innate ability to recognize their own species’ song. To sing the complete version, the young birds must first hear it sung by adults.
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28. Instinct and Learning Combined
Some young animals learn to recognize and follow the first moving object they see during an early time in their lives. This process is called imprinting.
Imprinting keeps young animals close to their mother, who protects them and leads them to food.
Once imprinting occurs, the behavior cannot be changed.
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29. Instinct and Learning Combined
Imprinting can occur through scent as well as sight.
Salmon imprint on the odor of the stream in which they hatch. When they are mature, salmon remember the odor of the stream and return there to spawn.
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34-1
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34-1
Change in an animal's behavior as a result of experience is called
stimulus.
learning.
response.
reflex.
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34-1
When a spider builds a web, it displays
learned behavior.
innate behavior.
habituation.
insight learning.
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34-1
Ivan Pavlov's training of a dog to salivate in response to a ringing bell is known as
habituation.
imprinting.
classical conditioning.
stimulus.
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34-1
The process in which young animals learn to recognize and follow the first moving object they see is called
insight learning.
habituation.
imprinting.
classical conditioning.
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34-1
Habituation helps animals survive because it
helps animals find food.
enables animals to escape predators.
enables animals to recognize members of their own species.
helps animals avoid wasting time and energy.
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