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BIO 100 Lecture 3

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25 views21 pages

BIO 100 Lecture 3

Uploaded by

prince Hossain
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lecture 3: Animal

Behavior
BIO 100
Afreen Zaman Khan
What is behavior?

 Behavior can be defined as an expressed


course of action produced in organisms in
response to stimulus from a given situation

You can think of this an anything an


organism does; but this behavior can be learnt or
inherited
A brief history…

 Humans first studied animal behavior for


practical reasons
 They studied prey so that they could hunt more
efficiently
 Behavior
was observed for selective breeding and
domestication of cows, dogs etc.
 During the Middle Ages in Europe, naturalists began
to define behavior as part of the biology of
organisms
 Animal behavior became a formal discipline in the
early 1900s
 Much progress has been made over the past two
decades

Ethology: the study of how animals


behave in their natural environment
Nature vs Nurture

Behaviors Behaviors

Innate Learned

Hard-wired Flexible

Genetically Not
determined genetically
determined
Innate behavior

 These are inherited behavioral characteristics


 Instincts are complex and inborn behavior patterns
of immediate adaptive survival value to the
organism and are produced in response to sudden
changes in the environment
Innate behavior types

 Agonistic behavior
 Dominance status
 Territorial behavior
 Altruistic behavior
Agonistic behavior

Group of behavioral adjustments associated


with fighting
 Threat: showing intent to display
aggression
 Submission: signaling non-aggressiveness
to reduce further attack by the aggressive
individual
 Aggression: attacking with the objective of
causing physical injury
Dominance status

 Often established based on the size,


strength, or other physical characteristics of
organisms
 This created a social hierarchy
 This minimizes conflict and ensures survival
of the fittest organisms
Territorial behavior

 A territory is held and protected by an


animal
 Helps in acquiring resources and mates
 Territories are found prior to breeding,
usually by males. Defense of the area is
greatest at the time of breeding and
fiercest between males of the same
species The level of aggression shown
by an organism increases towards the
center of the territory
 The aggressiveness of males is determined partly
by the level of testosterone in the body and this can
affect territory size
 Territories are generally acquired through threats,
gestures and postures in place of actual fighting
 Having obtained a territory, many species especially
carnivores proceed to mark out the boundary by
leaving a scent trail. This may be done by urinating
or rubbing parts of the body against objects called
scent posts along the boundary of the territory
Altruistic behavior

 Helping others without seeing one’s


own benefit, or even putting one’s own
survival at risk for another
 Usually to protect offspring, siblings etc
 Some forms of altruistic behavior are
more difficult to explain (like monkeys
taking care of other monkey’s
offspring)
Learned behavior

 Learning can be defined as an adaptive change in


individual behavior as a result of experience
 The degree of permanence of newly acquired
learned behavior patterns depends on memory
storing information gained from the experience
 Learning alters the range of behaviors shown by an
individual, and allows it to adapt to and control its
environment
Types of learned behavior

 Habituation
 Associative learning
 Exploratory learning
 Insight learning
 Imprinting
Habituation

 Continuous repetition of a stimulus not


associated with reward or punishment
(reinforcement) puts off any response
to the stimulus
 E.g birds learn to ignore scare crow
Associated learning

 Classical conditioning: association of events


over which the organism has no control
 Pavlov’s experiment showed with dogs that If
the sound of a bell was followed by food, the
dogs ultimately began to salivate at the sound
of the bells even when no food arrived
 Operant conditioning: this involves trial-
and-error, and involves gaining control
over one’s environment
 Skinner’s experiment:
 The animal is placed in a box which has some
sort of reward for conducting a behavior
 If the animal presses a lever, it receives a
food pellet
 By trial-and-error, the animal learns that
pressing the lever delivers the reward
 The animal learns to associate its own
behavior with a particular outcome
Exploratory learning

 Many animals, such as mice, explore their


surroundings and environment even though that has
no immediate value
 But the behavior can eventually be useful (like when
escaping prey)
Insight learning

 Highest form of learning


 Involves thinking and reasoning
 Kohlar’s experiment on chimpanzees
suggested insight learning:
 When presented with wooden boxes and bananas
too high to reach, the chimps stacked up the
boxes beneath the bananas and climbed up to
get them
Imprinting
 During early stages in the lives of
animals, they directly copy many
behaviors from their parents
 This is how birds learn to fly, sing etc.
 Can be thought of as a combination
of innate and learned components
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6hREwakXmAo

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