Start-Up: List some behaviors of your pet (if you don’t have a pet, list some behaviors of an animal you like). Identify the immediate and ultimate cause of at least one of those behaviors.

Animal Behavior

Behavior has to be either:

Learned

Ex. Learning how toproperly attack and kill prey

Or Innate(not learned; genetically programmed)

Ex. eating, sleeping, crying

How do you tell if a behavior is learned or if it is innate?

Innate Behaviors

Taxis – directed movement toward or away from a stimulus

Can be positive (+) or negative (-)

Phototaxis – movement toward or away from light

+ Phototaxis – toward lightExample: plant bending toward sun

- Phototaxis – away from lightExample: cockroach running for cover

when lights are turned on

Geotaxis – movement toward or away from gravity

+ Geotaxis – movement toward gravityExample: plant roots

- Geotaxis – movement away from gravityExample: tree growing taller

More Innate Behaviors

When the innate behavior always occurs the same way regardless of the stimulus it is called a

Fixed Action Pattern (FAP)

The behavior will continue to completion even if the stimulus is taken away

Example of a Fixed Action Pattern

1. Parent gull eats food at sea

2. Returns to nest

3. Chick taps the side of the parent’s beak

4. Tapping action causes the parent to open its mouth

5. Chick places head in parent’s mouth

6. Parent regurgitates some of its food for the chick to eat

FAPAnother example in gulls…

How do parents feed their chicks?

A, D, FNo Tapping

B, C, ETapping

MODELSRESPONSE

A ethologist used different models to represent the beak of a gull and presented each one in turn to a chick

Do humans exhibit FAPs?

More Innate Behaviors

Rhythmic behavior – regularly repeated behavior that is synchronized to rhythmic changes in the environment

-controlled by organism’s internal “biological clock”

Examples:

Daytime (diurnal) or Nightime (nocturnal) activity

Migration – seasonal or non-seasonal

Watch the video and tell me if the behavior you are watching is innate or learned.

How can you tell?

Learned Behavior

Habituation – a change in an animal’s behavior resulting from experience

Example: hydra jerk when touched

But it eventually stops responding after awhile

Hissing Cockroaches!

Hiss when touched (defense mechanism)

But it eventually stops after awhile

Then what’s the point of habituation?

More Learned Behavior

Imprinting – learning that is limited to a specific

time period in an animal’s life and that is usually irreversible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGBqQyZid04

Insight – ability to respond appropriately to a new situation without previous experience by basing

the solution on prior knowledge

Ex. Pigeon-box-banana videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDntbGRPeEU&feature=related

More Learned Behavior

Conditioning – learning that a particular stimulus or response is linked to a reward or punishment

1. Classical – otherwise meaningless stimulus is associated with a certain response

Example: Pavlov’s dogs

Other examples:

-associating a certain song to a particular time in your life-associating a smell to a place

Example of Learned Behavior

2. Operant Conditioning – “trial and error”

Example: Skinner’s Box and pigeon ping pong

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQtDTdDr8vs&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtfQlkGwE2U&feature=related