Innate and Learned
Behavior
Setareh Ekhteraei
What is the Difference?
 Innate, or instinctive, experience, is not affected by
the environment of the organism.
 Learned behavior is caused by the environment of
the organism.
Why Quantitative?
 Results need to be quantitative in behavior
experiments.
 Ex: If Planaria, or flatworms, are placed in a dish in
which all other variables, such as the light or
temperature in different parts of the dish, are the
same, given that there is food on one end of the dish,
the flatworms will move towards it.
 This is known as taxis, “a movement towards or away
from a directional stimulus.”1
 However, we have to keep track of each organism as we
study its behavior. We cannot only make general,
descriptive observations.
 This could be approached in the above example by
dividing the dish into a half with food and a half without
food, and recording the number of Planaria in each half of
the dish every minute.
What’s Kinesis?
 “Kinesis is response to a nondirectional stimulus, in which the
rate of movement or the rate of
turning depends on the level of
the stimulus, but the direction of
movement is not affected.”1
 As humidity increases, the
woodlice move less and the
number of turns per hour also
decreases. However, the rate at
which the lice move increases.
Woodlice “often congregate in
small, humid spaces, increasing
their chances of survival and
reproduction.”1
How does Learned Behavior
Influence Survival?
 In dynamic environments, learned behavior and
adaptation can help an organism increase its
chances of survival.
 Ex: Foxes have learned not to touch electric fences
after they are shocked by them.
 Ex: “Birds learn to avoid eating orange and black
striped cinnabar moth caterpillars, after associating
their coloration and unpleasant taste.”1
What is Pavlov’s Dog?
 Pavlov “investigated the salivation reflex in dogs”1 and
learned that dogs can be conditioned (their behavior can be
altered) due to the association of external stimuli.
 Pavlov noticed that the dogs showed an unconditioned
response by salivating upon the sight and taste of meat, called
the unconditioned stimulus.
 Then Pavlov used neutral stimuli (a bell and a metronome)
before presenting the unconditioned stimulus. After a few
days, the dogs had learned to associate these sounds with the
arrival of food, and would salivate before the unconditioned
stimulus. The sound of the bell/metronome, then, would be
the conditioned stimulus, and the secretion of saliva would be
the conditioned response.
Why is Birdsong
Important?
 In some species, birdsong is partly innate and partly
learned.
 Ex: chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs): males use song to hold their
territory and attract females. Each male’s song is slightly
different to allow their identification, and also specific to
chaffinches.
 If you listen to a song from a chaffinch reared in isolation, it has
some features of the normal (bird not isolated) chaffinch song,
however, there is a narrower range of frequencies, indicating
that chaffinches learn from each other.

Spectrograms:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/the-science-of-sound-1/what-is-a-spectrogram/

http://iainpetrie.typepad.com/the_four_ages_of_sand/2010/05/doing-science-with-chaffinches-what-canwe-learn-from-sonograms-.html
Quiz
 1.Experience not affected by the
environment.
 2.Experience that is a result of the
environment.
 3.What type of response is each
example to the right?
 4.Explain Pavlov’s Conditioning
in Dogs.
 5.Explain how birdsong is
important.
Answers
 1. Innate/ Instinctive Behavior
 2.Learned Behavior
 3. See image at right.
 4. Pavlov learned that dogs can be
conditioned. He found that dogs
showed an unconditioned response
to the unconditioned stimulus, and
after associating neutral stimuli with
the unconditioned stimulus, was
able to achieve a conditioned
response from this new conditioned
stimulus created.
 5.Birdsong is partly innate and
partly learned in some species.
Sources
Allott, Andrew. Biology for the IB Diploma: Standard
and Higher Level. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.
Allott, Andrew. Biology for the IB Diploma: Standard
and Higher Level. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.
"Cornell Lab of Ornithology." : Bioacoustics Research
Program. Cornell University, 2015. Web. 21 Apr. 2015
"The Four Ages Of Sand." 'The Four Ages Of Sand'
N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2015.