Animal Behavior from a scientific perspective

1. Animal Behavior
Why do animals behave as they do?

2. Why do animals behave as they do?
• Why do cats pounce on people’s feet?
• Why do dogs chase kids that run?
• Why do birds sing?
• Why do rattlesnakes rattle?
• Why do fish strike at a fisherman’s fly?
• What makes bees sting?
• Why are bees or birds attracted to flowers?

3. Key Ideas to Remember
• Animal behaviors are regulated by various
mechanisms and are important in natural
selection.
• Animal behaviors influence species
distribution and abundance.

4. Reasons for behaviors answers 4 questions
Proximal causation:
1. What stimulus elicits the behavior and what
physiology mediates the response?
2. How does experience influence the response?
Ultimate causation:
3. How does the behavior aid survival and
reproduction?
4. What is the behavior’s evolutionary history?

5. Types of behaviors
• Reflex
• Fixed action pattern
• Taxis
• Behavioral rhythm
• Signal
• Communication
– visual, chemical, tactile, auditory

6. Animal communications
• Why do cats meow?
• Why do dogs bark?
• Why do birds sing?
• Why do crickets chirp?
• Why do stoneflies drum?

13. Types of behaviors
• Reflex
• Fixed action pattern
• Taxis
• Behavioral rhythm
• Signal
• Communication
– visual, chemical, tactile, auditory

15. Types of behaviors
• Innate = developmentally fixed, unchangable
• Learned = flexible, change with experience
– Imprinting
– Spatial learning
– Associative learning
– Problem solving
– Cognition
– Social learning