Innate behavior helps an individual to survive to reproduce when there is a stable environment and expected events occur.

Crying for a human baby or opening up the mouth for a baby bird tells the parent that the baby needs something.

Learned behavior helps an individual to survive to reproduce when there is an unstable environment and many unexpected events occur.

This mother gull will feed her chick after it pecks at a red spot on her beak. Both pecking and feeding behaviors are innate

When these baby birds open their mouths wide, the mother instinctively feeds them. This innate behavior is called gaping.

Newborn turtles have the instinct to return to the water after hatching from eggs on the beach.

Fixed action patterns are behaviors that are genetically determined and are performed correctly the first time. They continue to be performed in a stereotyped fashion. The particular stimulus that elicits a fixed action pattern is the releaser. In this example the fixed action pattern is egg retrieval by the goose; the releaser is any small, round object outside of the nest (it doesn’t need to be an egg!).

Fig. 51.23

The behavior of themale stickleback fishis an example ofa FAP…Can you explain why?

• Imprinting is the recognition, response, and attachment of young to a particular adult or object.• Konrad Lorenz experimented with

geese that spent the first hours of their life with him and after time responded to him as their “parent.”

Imprinting is learning limited to a sensitive period

–What is innatein these birds is theability to respondto a parent figure;while the outsideworld providesthe imprintingstimulus.

– The sensitive period is a limited phase in an individual animal’s development when learning particular behaviors can take place

Fig. 51.9

• Some songbirds have a sensitive period for developing their songs.

• If they don’t get imprinted on a song at an early age, they never will.

Fig. 51.10a

• Associative learning is the ability of many animals to learn to associate one stimulus with another.

• Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are examples of associative learning.

4. Many animals can learn to associate one stimulus with another

–Pavlov’s dog is a good example of associative learning (classical conditioning)• Ivan Pavlov exposed dogs to a bell

ringing and at the same time sprayed their mouths with powdered meat, causing them to salivate.• Soon, the dogs would salivate after

hearing the bell but not getting any powdered meat.

Note: the apparatus attached to the dogs salivary glands to measure its saliva output

• Operant conditioning– This is called trial-and-error learning - an

animal learns to associate one of its own behaviors with a reward or a punishment.

Fig. 51.11

This animal will learn to avoid porcupines after then pain received from this experience.

• Habituation–This involves a loss of

responsiveness to unimportant stimuli or stimuli that do not provide appropriate feedback.•For example, some animals stop responding to warning signals if signals are not followed by a predator attack (the “cry-wolf” effect).

Habituation is when an animal is presented with a stimulus and responds to this stimulus, but when the stimulus is presented repeatedly with only a few minutes or seconds between it soon stops responding to the stimulus because it has learnt that it will not harm or benefit the animal so it has learnt to ignore it.

An example of this is a snail moving across a wooden surface and when the experimenter taps on the surface the snail withdraws into its shell but after a few taps it learns that it isn't going to harm it and ignores the tapping.

• Observational Learning is the modificationof behavior resulting fromspecific experiences. – The alarm calls of vervet

monkeys provide an example of how animals improve their performance of behavior.

Fig. 51.8

Can you think of a time in your life when this was especially true? Childhood, as you may have thought, is a time when we learn all kinds of behaviors by observation and imitation. Sometimes called "modeling," such observational learning occurs throughout our lifetime.

• Kinesis and taxis.•Kinesis is a change in activity rate in

response to a stimulus.– For example, cockroaches scatter everywhere when

you turn on the light.

–Taxis is an automatic, oriented movement to or away from a stimulus.–For example, a euglena will move directly

toward the light.

• Agonistic behavior is a contest involving threats.– Submissive behavior.– Ritual: the use of symbolic activity.– Generally, no harm is done.

Fig. 51.19

Agonistic behavior results in a contest which involves both threatening and submissive behavior between contestants who are competing for access to the same resource, such as food or a mate. Sometimes it involves tests of strength or the contestants engage in threatening displays that make them look large or fierce, often with exaggerated posturing and vocalizations, such as a dog growling and bearing teeth or when defeated, tucking in their tail and looking away.

• Courtship behavior consists of patterns that lead to copulation and consists of a series of displays and movements by the male or female.

Insight learning occurs when an animal solves a problem or learns how to do something new by applying what it already knows, without a period of trial and error. Insight learning is most common in primates, such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans

• Defining animal signals and communication.– A signal is a behavior that causes a change in the

behavior of another animal.– The transmission of, reception of, and response to

signals make up communication.– Examples include the following:• Displays such as singing, and howling.• Information can be transmitted in other ways,

such as chemical, tactile, electrical.

Social interactions depend on diverse modes of communication

– Pheromones are chemicals released by an individual that bring about mating and other behaviors.

These bees are making a “bee beard” due to the application of the queen bee’s pheromones on the man’s face.

• The Dance of theHoneybee.– Bees forage to

maximize their food intake.

– If an individual finds a good food source, it will communicatethe location to others in the hive through an elaborate dance.

Fig. 51.27