Ch. 45 Animal Behavior Flashcards
(49 cards)
behavior
anything the animal does and how it does it
-response to a stimulus
what are tinbergen’s four questions?
- causation
- development
- adaptive function
- evolutionary history
causality
- proximate: HOW (what stimulus triggered this? what are genetic/physiological mechanisms of this behavior?)
- ultimate: WHY (why did natural selection favor this behavior? how does behavior improve fitness?)
example: the spiny lobster forages at night and returns to its den before dawn. what are proximate and ultimate causes of this behavior?
proximate: HOW they navigate at night? physiological mechanism to guide them in the dark with the earth’s magnetism
ultimate: WHY do they navigate at night? hunting for food under cover of darkness protects them from predation
behavior is a combination of _____ and _____ factors
genetic and environmental
development
how did the behavior develop?
- genes and the environment shaping behavior
- ex. bird sings because he learned to sing form his father
adaptive function
- behavior and how its promotes the survival/reproduction of individuals
- ex. male bird sings because it attracts females = more reproduction
evolutionary history
how behavior evolved over time
- complex bird songs evolved because ancestors sang over time and the songs became habituated in the population
- bird songs may have evolved because originally used to claim territories, but now used to attract mates
innate behaviors
instinctive and carried out regardless of earlier experiences
-male bombyx moth innately flies toward female pheromones (does not need to learn this, does it spontaneously)
learned behaviors
depend’s on an individual’s experiences
-fruit flies avoid flying toward area where they had an unpleasant experience
displays
patterns of behavior that are species specific, tend to be highly repeatable, and similar from one individual to the next
- example of a fixed action pattern
- birds who are isolated usually still perform the same displays as their own species of birds
fixed action pattern (FAP)
- series of behaviors that are automatically followed through to completion once initiated
- innate
- behavior s so important that all variaiton has been lost
-ex. goose egg retrieval, fish attacking automatically
key stimulus
example - misplaced egg
“trigger”
supernormal stimulus
-soccer ball instead of an egg
supernormal because the soccer ball is way larger than any egg and causes an exaggerated response
feature detectors
carries out stimulus recognition
- specialized sensory receptors that respond to important signals in the environment
- sometimes these responses trigger the release of certain hormones
hormones can affect _____
behavior
ex. testosterone
learning
when experiences lead to changes in behavior
non associative learning
learning that occurs in the absence of any particular outcome (such a punishment/reward)
-“habituation” and “sensitization” is a type of associative learning
habituation
-examples: initially, chicks crouch when a shadow is over them, but they learn to stop crouching because there is no real threat
decreased response to a stimulus over time
less sensitive to each subsequent response
sensitization
increased response to a stimulus over time
more sensitive to each subsequent response
associative learning (conditioning)
animal learns to link (associate) two events
- classical
- operative
classical conditioning
when two stimuli are paired that have nothing to do with each other
-example: dogs hear ringing bell sound/receive meat powder (eventually, dogs salivate at the sound of the bell alone)
operant conditioning
linking a behavior with a reward or punishment
-reward leads to more occurrences of a behavior, punishment leads to less of a particular behavior
ex: training a dog to pee/poop outside
type of conditioning where association is made between a stimulus and a behavior
classical
