Name
Date
Introduction to Animal Behavior Notes
Period
Introduction to Animal Behavior Notes
Slide #2 – Essential Questions:
1. What is animal behavior?
2. Why do animals behave the way they do?
3. Why do we study animal behavior?
4. What are the major components of the Theory of Evolution?
5. How does the Theory of Evolution relate to the study of animal behavior?
Slide #3 – Ethology:
– study of animal behavior
1.
2. Animal Behavior –
1. The way an animal acts and behaves
2. Anything an animal does involving action and response to a stimulus
3. Stimulus – a thing or event that evokes a specific
;
something that causes a response
1. Ex: Change in temperature or weather; A gazelle seeing a lion so it runs
4. Response – a
or answer
5. Reflex –
response to a stimulus
Slide #5 – Why do animals behave they way they do?:
1. To find
2. To
predators
3. To reproduce
4. Animal Behavior - Crash Course Biology #25
Slide #6 – Why do we study animal behavior?:
1. Make use of
1. Horses for riding and pulling
2. Oxen for farm work
3. Dogs for hunting and law enforcement
creatures
2. Humans need for
1. Understanding
behaviors
2. Where to find fish and game
3. What is safe and what is not
4. Migration and seasonal availability
Slide #7 – Why do we study anima behavior?:
3. Ensure animal welfare
1.
of natural habitats
2. Manufacturing of artificial setting
4. To further develop
theory
Slide #8 – Why do we study animal behavior?:
5. Knowing how to appropriately encounter
6.
animals
control
Slide #9 – Why do we study animal behavior?:
7.
species
1. Not native to an area
2. Causes changes to the ecosystem
3. Ex: Asian shore crab, Emerald ash borer, zebra mussel
8. To satisfy intellectual
Slide #10 – Intelligence:
1. Intelligence – the ability to
and understand from experience
1. A sign of high level of intelligence is an animal being self-aware
2. Self-awareness –
of consciousness of self
1. Dolphins reacting to mirror underwater
3. Only
animals are self-aware
1. Humans, Orangutans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bottlenose Dolphins,
Elephants, Orcas, Baboons, Rhesus Macaques, European Magpies
2. Primate – omnivorous mammals with highly developed
Slide #11 – Intelligence & Behavior:
1. Some behaviors can be grouped as innate or learned
1. Innate behavior –
or natural ways of action
1. Instinct – independent of will or as an
response
2. Ex: Instinctively putting your hands out to break a fall
3. Ex: Birds hatching from their eggs they do that without being taught and
migrating to warmer climates during winter season
1. Clutch – a nest of
or a brood of newly hatched birds
2. Migration –
from one place to another
2. Learned behavior – actions acquired (learned) through experience
1. Ex: ability to ride a bike, ability to use tools
2. Life – Highly Intelligent Monkey (using tools)
3. Are crows the ultimate problem solvers? Inside the Animal Mind - BBC
Slide #12 – Communications & Interactions:
1. As animals live together in a particular
, it will evoke various behaviors
1. Territory – a defined
of region
2. Population – any group living organisms in a specific area
3. Mode – a
of doing something
1. Ex: Bees communicate by dancing
2. Within the population, animals can exhibit aggressive, submissive, and dominant
behaviors
1. Dominant – Exercising
or influence
2. Submissive – behavior that shows
resistance
3. Aggression –
or destructive behavior
1. Ex: a pack of wolves establishes a hierarchy
Slide #14 – Theory of Evolution:
1. Over 150 years ago, Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species
2. Scientists realized that the evolutionary theory of natural selection provided a
revolutionary way of looking at all living things
1. Theory of Evolution –
of a species over time
(Earth’s present-day species developed from earlier, distinctly different species)
2. Scientific starting point to determining why animals do the things they do and
why they have
, developmental, sensory, neuronal,
and hormonal mechanisms that make these behavioral abilities possible
3. As evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhanskey said “Nothing in biology
makes sense except in the light of evolution”
Slide #15 – Principles of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection:
– a population generally produces more offspring than can
1.
survive in the environment (ex: fish lay millions of eggs to result in few adult fish)
2. Competition – because of overpopulation, there is competition, or a struggle for survival,
between organisms for space, food, water, light, minerals, or other
resources
3. Variation – members of a population show variations (
in
traits) that make certain individuals better adapt to survive. (ex: differences in structure,
size and color)
Slide #16 – Principles of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection:
4. Natural Selection – since some variations are
helpful than
others, there is a natural selection against organisms that cannot adapt. Organisms that
cannot
die.
1. Natural Selection – traits that help an organism
in a changing environment are passed on to the next generation
2. Overtime, natural selection causes a change in the inherited characteristics of a
population.
3.
selects those individuals that have traits that will
survive in a changing environment
Slide #17 – Principles of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection:
– survival of the fittest applies to those
5. Survival of the
individuals that have variations that enable them to live and reproduce
1. Differences in reproductive success – with some individuals having more
surviving
than others in their population,
thanks to their distinctive characteristics
6. Inheritance of Variation – Organisms with helpful variations are more likely to survive
and to reproduce, passing these
to their offspring
1. Heredity – parents are able to
on some of their
distinctive characteristics to their offspring
7. Evolution of New Species – Over long periods of time, variations
in a population. Eventually, there are so many variations that the population becomes a
new species
Slide 18 – Testing Evolutionary Ideas:
1. For the purpose of testing evolutionary ideas, we can assume that whatever trait exists
today must have “
” a reproductive competition that took place in the past
1. If the assumption is wrong, our tests, if they are fair will reveal this point
2. If the assumption is correct and the trait did win out over time, then we are
dealing with an adaption
1. Adaption – a characteristic that confers
inclusive fitness to individuals than any other existing alternative
exhibited by other individuals within the population
2. A trait that has spread or is spreading or is being maintained in a
population as a result of
3. Adaptationist– a
selection
biologist who
develops and tests hypotheses on the possible adaptive value of a
particular trait
Slide 19 – Darwinian Puzzles:
1. Darwinian Puzzles –
to evolutionary theory
2. Biologists deal with these puzzles by developing possible explanations based on natural
selection theory for how the surprising trait might actually help individuals
and pass on their genes
3. Ex: How can it be adaptive for a male langur to harm the offspring of females in his
group, particularly since attacking males can be and sometimes are injured by mothers
defending their babies?
4. Potential Explanation:
1. Males will not kill their own
but will focus their
attacks on the offspring of other males
2. New males could father offspring more quickly if they first kill the infants.
Females who lose their infants do resume ovulating and that enables the new
males to become fathers of their
offspring
3. Since these predictions have been show to be correct for this species as well as
other primates, various carnivores, horses, rodents and even bats, we can safely
conclude that
as practiced by male langurs
is indeed an adaption, the produce of natural selection
Slide #20 – Summary:
1.
theory provides the foundation for behavioral
biology, the study of animal behavior (ethology)
2. Charles Darwin realized that evolutionary change would occur if “natural selection” took
place.
3. Researchers interested in the adaptive value of behavioral traits use natural selection
theory to develop particular hypotheses on how a specific behavior might enable
individuals to achieve higher reproductive
than
individuals with alternative traits
4.
hypotheses can be tested in the standard manner of
all scientific hypotheses by making predictions about what we must observe in nature.
5. The beauty of science lies in the ability of scientists to use
evidence to evaluate the
alternative hypotheses
of competing theories and
and