Animal Behavior

Behavior

• What an animal does

• How it does it

Pet ActivityOn a separate sheet of paper:

• 1. Write the name of one of your pets. Is it a bird, dog, or cat? Other?

• 2. What behaviors do you think about when you think of your pet? Give a list of behaviors. Indicate if the behavior was genetic “innate” or learned.

Behavioral Ecology

• Behavioral ecology emphasizes evolutionary hypothesis: science as a process

• Based on expectation that animals behave in ways that will increase their Darwinian fitness (reproductive success)

Stimuli

• Certain stimuli trigger innate behaviors called fixed action patterns

• A fixed action pattern (FAP) is a highly stereotypical, innate behavior that continues to completion after initiation by an external stimulus

Learning

• Learning is experience based modification of behavior

• Some learning is due mostly to inherent maturation

• Habituation is learning involving loss of sensitivity to unimportant stimuli

• Associative learning involves linking one stimulus with another

Rhythmic Behaviors

• Rhythmic behaviors synchronize an animal’s activities with daily and seasonal changes in the environment

• Governed by endogenous clocks, which in turn require exogenous cues to keep the behavior properly timed with the external environment

Foraging Behavior

• Ecologists are using cost/benefit analysis to study foraging behavior

• Species may be generalists or specialists as foragers

• Animals modify behavior to favor a high ratio of energy intake to expenditure

Social Behavior

• Sociobiology places social behavior in evolutionary context

                                                       

Competitive Social Behaviors

• Agonistic behavior: competitor gains advantage by getting a limited resource like food or a mate

• Natural selection: survival of the fittest

• “Pecking order”: dominance hierarchies with differently ranked individuals permitted options according to their status

Mating Behavior

• Promiscuity – having many random mates

• Monogamy – having only one mate

• Polygamy – having a few, selected mates

Social Interactions

• Social interactions depend on diverse modes of communication

• Some animals communicate with smells

• Honeybees communicate through “dancing”

Altruistic Behavior

• Inclusive fitness accounts for most altruistic behavior

• Best explained by a “kin” theory, animals try to maintain the survival of others who share their genes

Reciprocal altruism

• Some animals behave altruistically toward others who are not relatives. A wolf may offer food to another wolf even though they share no kinship.

• Such behavior can be adaptive if the aided individual returns the favor in the future.

• This sort of exchange of aid is called reciprocal altruism.

• Commonly used to explain altruism in humans.

Sociobiology

• Human sociobiology connects biology to the humanities and social sciences

Self-quiz

• Bees can see colors we cannot see and detect minute amounts of chemicals we cannot smell. But unlike many insects, bees cannot hear very well. Which of the following statements best fits into the perspective of behavioral ecology?

Possible answers

• A. Bees are too small to have functional ears.

• B. Hearing must not contribute much to a bee’s fitness.

• C. If a bee could hear, its tiny brain would be swamped with information.

Possible answers

• D. This is an example of a fixed action pattern

• E. If bees could hear, the noise of the hive would distract the bees from their work

Challenge question

• Starting with the very first time a bee leaves the hive, it always flies in a circle around the hive before heading out on a foraging trip.

• If it is prevented from seeing the hive when it leaves or if the hive is moved while the bee is gone, the bee is not able to locate the hive when it returns.

Challenge Question

• For this reason, beekeepers know that a hive should only be moved …….when? Why?

• What part of the bees “orientation flight” behavior appears to be innate?

• What component shows learning?