2. Kinds of Behavior
• How do animals know
when a situation is
dangerous? How do they
know where to find food?
• Sometimes, animals
instinctively know how to
behave, but sometimes they
3. Innate Behavior
• Innate behavior: behavior that
doesn’t depend on learning or
experience
• Inherited through genes
• Examples: puppies inherit the
tendency to chew, bees inherit the
tendency to fly
– Other innate behaviors develop months
or years after birth walking is innate
humans, but we don’t do it for at least
a year after birth
4. • The male bowerbird inherits the
tendency to collect colorful objects for
its nest. These colorful additions
attract the female bowerbird to be his
mate!
5. Learned Behavior
• Innate behaviors can be modified
• Animals can use learning to change a
behavior
• Learned behavior: behavior that has been
learned from experience or from observing
other animals
• Humans inherit the tendency to speak, but
the language we use is not inherited
• All animals can learn
6. Survival Behavior
• Finding Food
Many animals hunt for their food, This chimpanzee uses tools to get
like this owl hunting mice to the insect for food
7. – Animals that eat
other animals are
known as
predators
– The animal being
eaten is the prey
– Example A frog
eats insects, so the
frog is a predator.
But a frog may be
eaten by a snake. In
this case, the frog is
the prey.
8. • Marking Territory
– Members of the same species must compete
for food and mates
– Some animals claim territories to save energy
by avoiding this competition
– Territory an area that is occupied by one
animal or a group of animals that do not allow
other members of the same species to enter
– Animals use their territories for mating, raising
young, and finding food
9. • Defensive Action
– Defensive behavior allows animals to protect
resources, including territories, from other
animals
– Animals defend food, mates, and offspring
– Also helps animals protect themselves from
predators, such as making themselves hard
to see
• Example: This rabbit
“freezes” so that its
color blends into the
background
10. Pet dogs When a predator is near,
sometimes growl a mother killdeer may
when a person pretend to have a
approaches while broken wing and move
its eating away from her young as
a distraction
11. • Courtship
– Animals need to find mates to reproduce
– Animals have special behaviors that help them
find a mate; these behaviors are referred to as
“courtship”
– Example: two cranes perform a courtship
display dance
12. • Parenting
– Some animals, like
caterpillars, start life being
able to take care of
themselves
– Many young depend on
their parents for survival
– Some adult birds bring
food to their young
because they cannot feed
themselves
– Other animals, like the
killer whale, spend years
teaching their young how
to hunt for food
13. Seasonal Behavior
• Migration
– Many animals avoid
cold weather by
traveling to warmer
places
– For short trips, animals
use landmarks to
find their way
(landmarks are fixed,
like mountain ranges,
rivers, and coast lines)
14. Each winter,
monarch
butterflies migrate
from North
America to central
Mexico. There
can be as many as
4 million
butterflies per
acre!
15. • Slowing Down
– Some animals deal with
food and water shortages
by hibernating
– Hibernation: period of
inactivity and decreased
body temperature that
some animals experience
in winter
– Winter is not the only time
for hibernation many
desert squirrels and mice
experience a similar
internal slowdown in the
hottest parts of summer,
when food and water are
scarce.
• This is called “estivation”
16. • A Biological Clock
– Animals need to keep track of time so that
they know when to store food and when to
migrate
– The internal control of an animal’s natural
cycles is called a biological clock
– Animals use clues such as the length of
the day and the temperature
– Circadian rhythms: daily cycles, such
as an animal waking up and getting
sleepy at about the same time each day
and night
17. Social Relationships
• Social behavior: the interaction among
animals of the same species; animals
depend on communication for their social
interactions
18. – Animals also communicate to find food, to
warn others of danger, to identify family
members, to frighten predators, and to
find mates
19. • Ways to Communicate
– Sound
• Sound is a signal that
can reach many
animals over a large
area
• Elephants use low
frequency rumbles
to communicate with
other elephants that
are kilometers away
20. – Touch
• Chimpanzees
often groom
each other
• This activity is an
important way for
primates to
communicate,
calm and comfort
each other, and
communicate
friendship or
support
21. – Chemicals
• Pheromones: chemicals that
animals use to communicate
• Ants and other insects
secrete a variety of
pheromones alarm
chemicals warn other ants of
danger and recognition
chemicals announce which
colony an ant is from to both
friends and enemies
• Many animals use
pheromones to find a mate
22. – Sight
• When we smile at a friend, we are sending a
visual message with body language
• Bees use body language to spread news about
food (the “waggle dance”)
• An animal that wants to scare another animal may
ruffle feathers or show its teeth
23. Living Together
• The Benefits of Living in
Groups
– Safer than living alone
– One animal can warn many
others of danger
– Helps animals find food
– Predators that hunt in
groups can kill larger prey
The ground squirrel whistles a loud
alarm if there’s danger
24. • The Downside of Living
in Groups
– Must compete with each
other for food and mates
– An area that has enough
food for one animal may
not have enough food for
a group of animals
– In these cases, groups
must move around in
search of food
– Animals in groups attract
predators
– Living as a group can also
help diseases spread
