Animal behaviour

1. An Introduction to Animal Behavior
By
Essam M. Abdelfattah
BSc., MSc., PhD

2. Ethology
Animal Behavior
• Scientific study of animal behavior in their natural
or usual environment
• Study of habits and customs of animals
• Founders of this study = famous behaviorists
Lorenz and Tinbergen
• Earned Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for their work
• Big Theory = Animal’s behavior evolved through
the animal’s interaction with its environment

3. What is animal behavior?
• Behavior: is the way in which animal interact
with its surrounding environment, both
– Animate Environment= (humans, other animals,
plants)
– Inanimate Environment= (objects, places, sun, air)
• All acts performed by animals (feeding,
drinking, fighting, etc..
• Response of animal to a certain stimulus

4. Aim of ethology (7 T)
1. To find and establish the optimum environmental
condition
2. To know what is going within the animal mind and
understand the body language
3. To diagnose disease (normal Vs. abnormal)
4. To examine and treat animals (how to handle animals)
1. Select method of restraint acc. To behavior of animal
5. To achieve animal reproduction and raise livestock
(sexual and maternal behavior)
6. To achieve animal welfare which will lead to high
performance and production
7. To know the actual causes which induce the
behavioral disorders or vices

5. Behavior and animal production
• An understanding of the behavior of livestock
will facilitate handling, reduce stress, and
improve both handler safety and animal
welfare. Large animals can seriously injure
handlers and/or themselves if they become
excited or agitated.
• Stockman, farm manager, animal transporter,
and designer of animal houses have to be
aware of farm animal behavioral informations

6. • Feeding behavior:
– what is the type and amount of food that animal
need, feed conversion efficiency, control of
feeding
• Reproductive behavior:
– Successful mating
– Survival of young animals
• Social behavior
– Knowledge of floor space and stocking density are
important for animal production

7. Behavior and veterinary medicine
• Knowledge of behavior is important for handling
and restraint of animals for surgeon
• Diagnosis of diseases: change in behavior is first
signs of disease (loss of appetite, altered activity,
loss of grooming)
– E.g. horse suffering from colic
• Diagnosis and treatment of different behavioral
problems in pets (behavioral therapy)
– Examples include pets with unacceptable elimination
behaviors or are aggressive to people or other
animals.

9. How is behavior determined?
• Is behavior inborn (instinctive) and
predetermined?
• Or is it a function of learning and the
environment?
Nature (biology) vs. Nurture (environment)?

10. How is behavior determined?
Both!
Behavior is a blend of innate
behavior (inherited) and acquired
(learned) behavior`

11. Classification of animal behavior
1. Inherited behavior (innate, unlearned,
instinctive, native)
– Important for survival and conservation of species
2. Acquired behavior (learned)
– Adopt useful method for survival within their
environment

12. Inherited behavior
• Includes two types:
1. Behavior of maintenance
– Constant behavioral patterns needed to
maintain animal life (self-maintenance) such as
ingestion, elimination, rest and sleep
2. Reproductive behavior
– Behavioral patterns occurring during
reproduction needed to maintain animal species
– Sexual behavior
– Maternal behavior

13. Maintenance behaviors
• Ingestive behavior:
• Related to anatomy and physiology of each species
(prehension)
• Related to nature of food (herbivorous, carnivores,
omnivorous)
• Including feeding (ingestion of solid feed), drinking (ingestion
of water and milk)
• Understanding of ingestive behavior (how to search for, to
locate and to ingest food) is critical to animal production.
– Horse = cropping by incisors
– Cattle = eating by tongue
– Sheep and goat = incisors and lips
– Dog = gulping the food

14. Eliminative behavior
• Evacuation of faces (defecation) and urine (urination)
• Posture or stance of elimination differ between
species,
– Horse: following defecation turn and smell the spot
– Cattle: raising of tail and arching of back
– Dog: raising one leg and urinate to substrate
– Cats: toilet behavior
– Birds: defecate by leaning forward, raising the tail and
spreading the feather
• differ between sexes,
– Male dog cock one leg and urinate while females usually
squat
• Differ with social status: increase with fear

16. Grooming behavior (body care)
• Including:
– Care of the body (natural grooming)
– Thermoregulation (regulate body temperature)
• Self-Grooming (Auto-grooming)= animal take care of
its own body through licking and rubbing (parts that
can reach)
– Body licking, nose licking, rolling, scratching
• Function
– Keep body clean (One good indicator of general health)
– Free from ecto-parasites
– Free from foreign objects (faces, urine, mud)
– Reduce risk of diseases

18. • Mutual grooming (social or allo-grooming)
• One animal take care of another animal
(herdmates)
• Function (biological and social):
– Remove ecto-parasites from parts that animal can not
reach
– Take care of wounds
– Reward for the groomer (obtain salt and vitamin D)
– Promote and cement relationship between individuals
– Reduce aggression and tension
– Maintain social structure

20. Reproductive behaviors
• The activities or actions during reproduction includes:
• Sexual behavior:
• Male sexual behavior
– Pre-copulatory (courtship/libido)
– Copulatory (erection, mounting, ejaculation, dismounting)
– Post-copulatory (quiet period, flehmen response)
• Female sexual behavior
– Estrous cycle (length, type, signs)
– Ovulation (type, time)
– Best time of mating
• Maternal behavior (care-giving behavior, Epimeletic,
attentive)

21. Maternal behavior (Epimeletic)
• Feeding and keeping of the offspring from danger by
dam (female) which is important for survival of animal
• Pre-parturient
– signs approaching parturition
– Nest-building (rabbits)
– Isolation and shelter-seeking (sheep)
• Parturient (stages of birth)
• Post parturient
– Licking behavior (maternal licking and imprinting)
– Sucking behavior
– Brooding in chickens

22. • Low maternal behavior (rabbit)
• High maternal behavior (dog)
• Maternal behavior is innate behavior however
experience play a role
• Factors influence the expression of maternal
behavior:
• Internal factors
– Hereditary (gene expression)
– Hormones (Prolactine)
– Experience
• External factors
– Smell, sound, and appearance of newborn

23. Two classes of maternal behavior
• Polytocous species (dog, cat, rabbits, mice, rat)
– Altracious young
– Young entirely depend on mother
• Monotocus species (horse, cattle, camel, sheep)
– Precocious young
– Low maternal behavior

24. Types of embryos
• Precocial: when newly born resemble adult
and can feed, move and defend themselves
e.g. Lamb of sheep.
• Altricial: when are helpless without parent
can’t survive e.g. mice, rats, dogs.
• Precocial Altricial

25. • Paternal behavior: in which both parents (male
and female) take care offspring equally
• E.g. many species of birds (pigeon) and fish (take
care of egg and fries)
• Male parental behavior: in which male take care
offspring
– Not common in animals (primates)
– Common in birds (dark eye junco)

26. Care soliciting behavior (Et-epimeletic)
• Care-soliciting behavior is a variety of behavioral
activities manifested to solicit attention, care, or help
from other individuals. For example, some dogs exhibit
this behavior during thunderstorms unnecessarily to get
'love' from owners.
• Usually manifested by young animals so called ‘’
infantile behavior’’ when was under stress or danger
(distress call)
– Chicks……….. Chirp
– Calves…………bawl
– Lambs………..bleat
– Puppies………whine or yelp

27. Agonistic behavior
• Aggression: a physical act or threat of action by an
individual which cause pain or injury or reduce
freedom of another individual
• Agonistic behavior: any behavior associated with
threat, attack or defense (escape, passivity, aggression)
• Function of aggression in animal life:
– To obtain food
– To facilitate access to another sex
– To establish social dominance
– To win territory
– To protect their young

28. Types of aggression
• Social aggression
– who will be dominant over whom
– To form peck order (social hierarchy)
– Type of social grouping
• Territorial aggression
– Keep animals out of home area
• Pain or fear- induced aggression
– Treatment of abscess
• Irritable aggression
– Hungary, fatigued, sick, old animals
• Maternal aggression
– To protect young and equal to male attack

29. • Sexual aggression
– Competition between animals of same species to obtain a
sexual partner
– In some species such as the cat, mating accompanied with
aggression
• Predatory aggression
– Food-getting behavior
– Some animals attack to obtain food
• Infanticide
– Killing of very young animals by adult
– Female rodents kill pups
– Rabbits eating their young

30. Allelomimetic behavior (mimesis,
contagious, gregarious or mimetic)
• In which two or more animals do the same
thing at the same with some degree of mutual
stimulation and coordination.
• Beneficial:
– maintain social group and provide safety
– Encourage feeding behavior
• Harmful:
– Spread of vices between members of group

31. Shelter-seeking behavior
• Looking for optimum environmental condition
to avoid predators
• Some animals find shelter from bodies of
other animals
• Other animals find shelter within farm, barn
or from objects like trees
• Thermoregulation

32. Exploratory behavior (investigatory
behavior)
• Explore their environment to obtain
information for survival by using sense organs
• Differ between species and individuals
• Allow time for investigation in new area

33. • Signaling between one animal & another
– Greeting e.g. sniff, hug, kiss
– Aggression e.g. charge, bite, hit, fight
– Non-aggression e.g. patting, head butting, stroking
• Verbal signaling (vocalization)
– E.g. bark, howl, hoot, chirp
• Non-verbal signaling
• E.g. body, head, ear, & / or tail position
• Showing teeth, smiling, sign language

35. Motivation (motivated behaviors)
• Behavior of maintenance and reproductive behavior
related to what is called motivation
• Motivation: the internal state of animal that causes
the immediate behavioral response
• Each organism born have a variety of biological needs
• Need: something that is required physiologically e. g.
need for food, water, sex
• When the need is not satisfied, the drive is aroused

36. • The drive: is psychological consequence of
need
• Once the animal in high drive state
(motivated), the animal start to move
• So we can observe 3 stages in animal’s
behavior:
1. The searching phase (Appetitive behavior)
2. Consumatory behavior (achievement of the
goal)
3. Phase of quiescence (satiation)

37. • Need
– Hunger
– Thirst
– Sexual drive
• Goal
– Food
– Water
– Other sex

38. Acquired behaviors
• Domestic animals have ability to learn
• They adopt new useful methods for survival
within their environment
• Animals acquire many behavioral patterns
through learning
• Learning
– Development of behavior through experience
– Determine final shape of innate behaviors
– 7 types of learning

39. Types of learning
• Habituation
• Is waning of a new response to a repeated stimulus
• Simplest form of learning
• Occur rapidly if stimuli are given close together
• Importance of habituation
– Filtering large amounts of information received from
surrounding environment
– Waning of the responses of farm animals to handling
procedures and housing conditions
• Animal learns to ignore frequent, harmless stimulus
• E.g scarecrow, habituation to observer

40. • Associative learning
• Animal learns to associate unrelated response with a
stimulus
• Two types of associative learning:
• Classical conditioning (CR type I, Pavlovian
conditioning)
• In which animal associate a response with a certain
stimulus as a result of reinforcement
• E.g. Pavlov’s experiments
– Bell ringing, food, salivation
– Bell ringing salivation (even if no food is given)

41. Pavlov’s experiment

42. How dog training works

43. Reinforcement
• In conditioning animals modify their behavior in such
way to obtain maximum reward and avoid
punishment
• Positive reinforcement…. Giving animal favorite food
• Negative reinforcement…. Punishment

44. • Classical conditioning
– E.g. 1. suckling by calf, squeezing of teat release
of oxytocine
– 2. Jangling of milking equipments, sight of calf
release of oxytocine

45. Operant conditioning (CR type II, trail and error)
• In which animal learn to behave in a certain way
through repeated practice
• Trail & error learning- animal tests conditions for
desired response
• In which animal is motivated by thirst, hunger, fear
but no UCS
• E.g. Skinner box (B.F. Skinner)
• Animal learns that a behavior gets a certain response
– E.g. rat presses lever to get food

47. Operant conditioning
• Because the animal uses behavior as
instrument in getting a reward, it is usually
called instrumental conditioning
• Operant used because the animal response in
some way operates on the environment

48. Reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement
– Used for strengthens a response
– Giving animals favored food e.g. grains
• Negative reinforcement
– Used for removing unwanted response
– Punishment such as hitting

49. Imprinting
• Definition:
• A process that occurs when an animal learns
to make a particular response to only type of
animal or object
• Both innate and learned
• Occurs during a definite critical time period
(within first 36 hr)
• Irreversible (once learned, can’t be changed)
• Conard Lorenz with duckling

50. Imprinting
• Animals learn to follow their mothers just
after parturition or hatching (attachment
behavior)
• Lambs and colts are most ones can be
imprinted to other animal, human, objects

51. Insight learning (Reasoning)
• Highest form of learning
• The immediate understanding, and response
to new situation without trail and error
• Was identified by Wolfgang kohler while
studying the behavior of chimpanzee
• Insight learning is the abrupt realization of a
problem's solution
• insight learning is often at the root of creative,
out of the box, thinking (Inventions and
innovations)

52. Kohler hung a piece
of fruit just out of
the reach
Provided the chimps
with either two
sticks or three boxes
Chimp. had a seat,
and start thinking
The first scenario
placing the smaller
stick into the longer
stick
The second scenario
stacking the boxes
on top of each other

54. • Insight learning is considered a type of
learning because it results in a long-lasting
change. Following the occurrence of insight,
the realization of how to solve the problem
can be repeated in future similar situations

55. Imitation (observational learning)
• Animal learns by observing another animal
• Albert Bandura, a Canadian-born psychologist,
gets credit for developing and
popularizing observational learning theory
• observational learning can be understood via
four distinct concepts:
• attention, retention, motor reproduction,
and reinforcement

57. Taste aversion (bait shyness)
• Taste aversion is a learned response to eating
spoiled or toxic food. When taste aversion takes
place, you avoid eating the foods that made
you ill. Taste aversion can be so powerful that
sometimes you also avoid the foods that
you associate with an illness, even if the food
did not cause the illness
• Psychologists John Garcia and Robert
Koelling studied taste aversion in 1966 while
researching the effects of radiation on
laboratory rats

60. Exploratory learning (latent)
• Animals learn all characteristics of
surrounding environment and remember its
landmarks
• Acquire new information about environment

61. Learning
• Learning occurs in a variety of ways:
– sometimes it is the result of direct observation of
another
– other times, it is the result of experience through
personal interactions with the environment.
– response to an environmental stimulus
– as a result of trial and error
– Kohler's theory of insight learning became an
early argument for the involvement of cognition,
or thinking, in the process of learning.

62. Type of adaptation
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPKlryXw
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