1. Animal Behavior

2. Animal Behavior
Ethologist: a scientist who studies animal behavior in nature
Is behavior inherited?
Is behavior learned?
Can a behavior be both?
What triggers the expression of a behavior?

3. Much animal behavior is. . .
Stereotypic: performed in the same way every time
Species-specific: little variation in the way individuals of a single species do something

4. But it can be modified!
Even spiders need to say “no” to drugs!

5. Evidence that a behavior is inherited
Konrad Lorenz
Deprivation: Ex. The crazy squirrel!
Hybridization: Ex. The mallard ballet!

6. Types of Behavior Development
1. Natural Selection
An animal that successfully completes a helpful behavior survives to pass on the behavior to offspring
Those whose genes fit the conditions survive.

7. Types of Behavior Development
2. Innate Behavior
Appears in fully functional form when first performed.
Ex. Startle behavior in a baby; purpose is self-preservation
Web building, nest building

8. Types of Behavior Development
3. Learning
Development of behaviors through experience
Determines final shape of innate behaviors
5 types of learning…will list these later.

9. Behavioral “Releasers”
Releasers: stimuli, usually sensory, that elicit or bring about a behavior.
Niko Tinbergen
Konrad Lorenz

10. What triggers baby gulls to beg for food?
Chicks eventually refine their behavior by ‘learning’…the learn to beg only from their parents

11. More evidence that learning shapes behavior
Tinbergen & the female digger wasp

12. Imprinting – A type of learning
Konrad Lorenz
Learning, during a critical period, a complex set of stimuli that can later serve as a releaser

13. Do birds have to “learn” to sing?
Young sparrows listen to adult males singing but are too young to sing themselves

14. Young sparrows that NEVER hear an adult sing cannot express their species’ song correctly

15. If a bird goes deaf after he makes a song memory but before he is mature enough to sing…he is out of luck
A bird has to “learn” twice to sing correctly…once to make a memory and then to use auditory feedback to perfect the song.

16. Learning and modifying behavior seems to be adaptive.
Then why is so much of animal behavior genetically determined?

17. Hormones & Behavior Why lady birds don’t sing…
Why Marlin should have become Nemo’s mom…

18. Fruit Fly Mating—It’s All in the Genes!

19. Honey Bees and the Waggle Dance

20. Pheromones Alarm system Mark the trail Releaser pheromones
Primer pheromones
Aggregation
pheromones

25. Please associate CLASSICAL CONDITIONING WITH Ivan Pavlov (Pavlov’s conditioning)

27. Skinner Box
Please associate OPERANT CONDITIONING with B. F. Skinner

30. Circadian Rhythms

31. Defense Mechanisms
1. Aposematism

32. 2. Crypsis

33. 3. Deceptive Markings

34. 4. Mullerian Mimicry
Fritz

35. 5. Batesian Mimicry “Red touches yellow, you’re a dead fellow;
Red touches black, you’re okay, Jack”