Chapter 51

Animal Behavior

PowerPoint® Lecture Presentations for

Biology
Eighth Edition
Neil Campbell and Jane Reece

Lectures by Chris Romero, updated by Erin Barley with contributions from Joan Sharp
Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Pearson Benjamin Cummings
Overview: Shall We Dance?

• Animal behavior is based on physiological systems

and processes.
• A behavior is the nervous system’s response to a
stimulus and is carried out by the muscular or the
hormonal system.
• Behavior helps an animal
– Obtain food
– Find a partner for sexual reproduction
– Maintain homeostasis.

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 Animal Behavior is subject to Natural Selection.

• An animal’s behavior is its response to external and

internal stimuli.
• Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior,
particularly in natural environments.
• According to early ethologist Niko Tinbergen, four
questions should be asked about behavior:
1. What stimulus elicits the behavior, and what
physiological mechanisms mediate the response?
2. How does the animal’s experience during growth
and development influence the response
mechanisms?

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 3. How does the behavior aid survival and
reproduction? Survival value
4. What is the behavior’s evolutionary history?
• These questions highlight the complementary nature
of proximate and ultimate perspectives.
• Behavioral ecology is the study of the ecological
and evolutionary basis for animal behavior.
• It integrates proximate and ultimate explanations for
animal behavior.

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• Proximate causation, or “how” explanations,
focus on
– Environmental stimuli that trigger a behavior
– Genetic, physiological, and anatomical
mechanisms underlying a behavior.
• Ultimate causation, or “why” explanations,
focus on
– Evolutionary significance of a behavior.

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Fixed Action Patterns FAP

• A fixed action pattern is a sequence of

unlearned, innate behaviors that is
unchangeable.
• Once initiated, it is usually carried to
completion.
• A fixed action pattern is triggered by an
external cue known as a sign stimulus.

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• In male stickleback fish, the stimulus for attack
behavior is the red underside of an intruder.
• When presented with unrealistic models, as
long as some red is present, the attack
behavior occurs.

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Sign stimuli in a
classic FAP
fixed action
pattern

(a)

(b)
Oriented / Directional Movement = Taxis …

• Environmental cues can trigger movement in a

particular direction.
• A taxis is a more or less automatic, oriented
movement toward or away from a stimulus.
• Many stream fish exhibit a positive taxis and
automatically swim in an upstream direction.
• This taxis prevents them from being swept
away and keeps them facing the direction from
which food will come.

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 Kinesis: non-directional change …

• A kinesis is a simple change in activity or

turning rate in response to a stimulus.
• For example, sow bugs become more active in
dry areas and less active in humid areas.
• Though sow bug behavior varies with humidity,
sow bugs do not move toward or away from
specific moisture levels.

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Kinesis - Sow bugs become more active in dry
areas and less active in humid areas

Moist site
Dry open
under leaf
area

Sow
bug
Migration

• Migration is a regular, long-distance change in

location.
• Animals can orient themselves using
– The position of the sun and their circadian
clock, an internal 24-hour clock that is an
integral part of their nervous system
– The position of the North Star
– The Earth’s magnetic field.

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Behavioral Rhythms

• Some animal behavior is affected by the

animal’s circadian rhythm, a daily cycle of rest
and activity.
• Behaviors such as migration and reproduction
are linked to changing seasons, or a circannual
rhythm.
• Some behaviors are linked to lunar cycles
– For example, courtship in fiddler crabs occurs
during the new and full moon.

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Animal Signals and Communication

• In behavioral ecology, a signal is a behavior

that causes a change in another animal’s
behavior.
• Communication is the transmission and
reception of signals.
• Animals communicate using visual, chemical,
tactile, and auditory signals.
• The type of signal is closely related to lifestyle
and environment.
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Courtship behavior of the fruit fly

(a) Orienting (b) Tapping (c) “Singing”

• Honeybees show complex communication with
symbolic language.
• A bee returning from the field performs a dance
to communicate information about the position
of a food source.

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Honeybee
dance
language

(a) Worker bees (b) Round dance

(food near)

(c) Waggle dance

(food distant)
A
30°
C
B Beehive

30
°

Location A Location B Location C

Pheromones

• Many animals that communicate through odors

emit chemical substances called pheromones.
• Pheromones are effective at very low
concentrations.
• When a minnow or catfish is injured, an alarm
substance in the fish’s skin disperses in the
water, inducing a fright response among fish in
the area.

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 (a) Minnows
before
alarm

Minnows
responding
to the
presence
of an (b) Minnows
After pheromone
alarm alarm signal
substance
Learning establishes specific links between
experience and behavior
• Innate behavior is developmentally fixed and
under strong genetic influence / inborn.
• Learning is the modification of behavior based
on specific experiences.

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Habituation

• Habituation is a simple form of learning that

involves loss of responsiveness to stimuli that
convey little or no information. Stop attending
to a stimulus that is irrelevant.
– For example, birds will stop responding to
alarm calls from their species if these are not
followed by an actual attack.

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Imprinting

• Imprinting is a behavior that includes a

specific critical period learning and innate
components and is generally irreversible.
• It is distinguished from other learning by a
sensitive period.
• A sensitive period is a limited developmental
phase that is the only time when certain
behaviors can be learned.

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• An example of imprinting is young geese
following their mother.
• Konrad Lorenz showed that when baby geese
spent the first few hours of their life with him,
they imprinted on him as their parent.
• Conservation biologists have taken advantage
of imprinting in programs to save the whooping
crane from extinction. Young whooping cranes
can imprint on humans in “crane suits” who
then lead crane migrations using small aircraft.

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Spatial Learning

• Spatial learning is a more complex

modification of behavior based on experience
with the spatial structure of the environment.
• Niko Tinbergen showed how digger wasps use
landmarks to find nest entrances.
• A cognitive map is an internal representation
of spatial relationships between objects in an
animal’s surroundings often using particular
landmarks.

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Does a digger wasp use landmarks to find her nest?

EXPERIMENT

Nest
Pinecone

RESULTS

Nest
No nest
Associative Learning
• In associative learning, animals associate
one feature of their environment with another.
Example: a mouse will avoid eating caterpillars
with specific colors after a bad experience with a
distasteful monarch butterfly caterpillar.
• Classical conditioning is a type of associative
learning in which an arbitrary stimulus is
associated with a reward or punishment.
Example: a dog that repeatedly hears a bell before
being fed will salivate in anticipation at the bell’s
sound.
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• Operant conditioning is a type of associative
learning in which an animal learns to associate
one of its behaviors with a reward or
punishment.
• It is also called trial-and-error learning.
Example: a rat that is fed after pushing a lever will
learn to push the lever in order to receive food.
Example: a predator may learn to avoid a
specific type of prey associated with a painful
experience.

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Cognition and Problem Solving

• Cognition is a process of knowing that may

include awareness, reasoning, recollection,
and judgment.
– For example, honeybees can distinguish
“same” from “different.”

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• Problem solving is the process of devising a
strategy to overcome an obstacle.
Example: chimpanzees can stack boxes in order
to reach suspended food.
• Some animals learn to solve problems by
observing other individuals.
Example: young chimpanzees learn to crack palm
nuts with stones by copying older
chimpanzees

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Development of Learned Behaviors

• Development of some behaviors occurs in

distinct stages.
– For example a white-crowned sparrow
memorizes the song of its species during an
early sensitive period.
– The bird then learns to sing the song during a
second learning phase.

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Both genetic makeup and environment contribute
to the development of behaviors

• Animal behavior is governed by complex

interactions between genetic and
environmental factors.
• Cross-fostering studies help behavioral
ecologists to identify the contribution of
environment to an animal’s behavior. A
cross-fostering study places the young from
one species in the care of adults from another
species.

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Regulatory Genes and Behavior

• A master regulatory gene can control many

behaviors.
Example: a single gene controls many behaviors
of the male fruit fly courtship ritual.
• Multiple independent genes can contribute to a
single behavior.
Example: in green lacewings, the courtship song
is unique to each species; multiple
independent genes govern different
components of the courtship song.
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