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Science AP®︎/College Biology Ecology Responses to the environment
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Intro to animal behavior
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Innate behaviors

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Learned behaviors

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Animal communication

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Animal communication

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Animal behavior: foraging

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Practice: Responses to the environment

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Energy flow through ecosystems

Intro to animal behavior
AP.BIO: 
ENE-3 (EU)
, 
ENE-3.D (LO)
, 
ENE-3.D.1 (EK)
, 
IST-5 (EU)
, 
IST-5.A (LO)
, 
IST-5.A.1 (EK)
, 
IST-5.A.2 (EK)
, 
IST-5.A.3 (EK)
 What exactly counts as behavior? What triggers behaviors? Are they hard-wired in animals' genes, or learned based on
experience?
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Key points
 Animal behavior includes all the ways animals interact with other organisms and the
physical environment.

 Behavior can also be defined as a change in the activity of an organism in response to

a stimulus, an external or internal cue or combo of cues.

 To fully understand a behavior, we want to know what causes it, how it develops in an
individual, how it benefits an organism, and how it evolved.

 Some behaviors are innate, or genetically hardwired, while others are learned, or

developed through experience. In many cases, behaviors have both an innate component and a
learned component.

 Behavior is shaped by natural selection. Many behaviors directly increase an organism's

fitness, that is, they help it survive and reproduce.

Introduction
Do the squirrels in your neighborhood bury acorns underground? Does your cat start meowing
around the time you usually feed her? Do you start hanging around the kitchen when it’s close to
dinnertime?

If you've noticed any of these things, congratulations—you've made your first observations in
behavioral biology! These are all examples of animal behaviors. Yep, you and I count as animals
too. In fact, these behaviors are just a tiny sampling of the amazing and diverse behaviors we can
see in nature.

We could ask what behavior is used for, but it might be better to ask, what isn't it used for?
Animals have behaviors for almost every imaginable aspect of life, from finding food to wooing
mates, from fighting off rivals to raising offspring. Some of these behaviors are innate, or
hardwired, in an organism's genes. For instance, this is true of the squirrel and its acorn.^11start
superscript, 1, end superscript Other behaviors are learned, such as your tendency to hang around
the kitchen at dinnertime or your ability to read the words on this screen.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at animal behavior—how it’s studied, how it evolves, and
how it can run the gamut from hardwired to learned.

What is behavior?
Broadly speaking, animal behavior includes all the ways animals interact with other members of
their species, with organisms of other species, and with their environment.

Behavior can also be defined more narrowly as a change in the activity of an organism in
response to a stimulus, an external or internal cue or combination of cues.

For example, your dog might start drooling—a change in activity—in response to the sight of
food—a stimulus.
 Image credit: Eye on the prize by Kae Yen Wong, CC BY-SA 2.0

Behavioral biology is the study of the biological and evolutionary bases for behavior. Modern
behavioral biology draws on work from the related but distinct disciplines of ethology and
comparative psychology.

 Ethology is a field of basic biology, like ecology or genetics. It focuses on the behaviors
of diverse organisms in their natural environment.

 Comparative psychology is an extension of work done in human psychology. It focuses

largely on a few species studied in a lab setting.
Behavioral biology also draws on many related areas of biology, including genetics, anatomy,
physiology, evolutionary biology, and, of course, neurobiology—which traces the neural circuits
that underlie animal behavior.

Four questions to understand a behavior

Nikolaas (Niko) Tinbergen was a Dutch ornithologist, or bird biologist, who studied behavior
and is now considered one of the founders of the field of ethology. Based on his own research,
Tinbergen proposed four basic questions helpful in understanding any animal behavior.

Let's look at these questions, using the production of song by the zebra finch—a common
songbird—as an example.
 Image credit: Taeniopygia guttata by Keith Gerstung, CC BY 2.0

1. Causation—What causes the behavior? What triggers the behavior, and what body
parts, functions, and molecules are involved in carrying it out?

Example: Singing is triggered in zebra finches by social cues, such as the proximity of a

potential mate, as well as the appropriate hormonal state. The ability to produce songs is
influenced by male hormones and occurs mainly in male birds. Songs are produced when air
 flows from air sacs in the bronchii through an organ called the syrinx. Certain parts of the brain
control song production and are well-developed in male zebra finches.

2. Development—How does the behavior develop? Is the behavior present early in life?
Does it change over the course of the organism's lifetime? What experiences are necessary for its
development?

Example: Young male zebra finches first listen to the songs of nearby males of their species,
particularly their fathers. Then, they start to practice singing. By adulthood, male zebra finches
have learned to produce their own songs, which are unique but often have similarities to those of
their fathers. Once a finch has perfected its song, the song remains fixed for life.

Image credit: modified from Songbird species recognition by Petra Deane, CC BY 1.0

3. Function/adaptive value—How does the behavior affect fitness? How does the

behavior affect an organism's chances of survival and reproduction?

Example: Singing helps male zebra finches attract mates, increasing the chances that they will
reproduce. Singing is part of an elaborate courtship ritual that entices the female to choose the
male.
4. Phylogeny—How did the behavior evolve? How does the behavior compare to those of
related species? Why might it have evolved as it did?

Example: Almost all species of birds can make vocal sounds, but only those in the
suborder Passeri are songbirds. Relative to the zebra finch, other songbird species differ in the
timing of their listening and practicing phases, the plasticity of song over their lifetimes, the
extent to which the song is similar among individuals of the species, and the way that singing is
used—for example, for defense of territory vs. courtship of mates.

Cues that trigger behavior

At its core, an animal behavior is a response to an internal or external cue. Through behavior,
animals can act on the information they receive in ways that will, hopefully, favor their survival
and reproductive success.

What kinds of cues can trigger behavior? In some cases, the cue is largely external:

 In hibernation, an animal goes into a den or burrow, reduces its metabolic rate, and
enters a state of inactivity during the winter, conserving resources while conditions are harsh and
food is scarce. Environmental cues often trigger hibernation behavior. For instance, brown bears
enter their den and hibernate when temperature drops to 0^\text{o}ostart superscript, start text, o,
end text, end superscriptC and snowfall begins.^22squared

 Estivation is similar to hibernation, but it occurs during the summer months. Some desert
animals estivate in response to dry conditions. This shift helps them survive the harshest months
of the year.^33cubed The snails in the photo below climb to the tops of fence posts to estivate.
 Image credit: Kadina snails climb fence by Vladimir Menkov, CC BY-SA 4.0

 Migration is a behavior in which animals move from one location to another in a

seasonal pattern. For instance, monarch butterflies living in the northern and central United
 States migrate to Mexico in the autumn, where they spend the winter. Environmental cues that
trigger the autumn migration include air temperature, day length, and food availability.^44start
superscript, 4, end superscript

In other cases, the cue for a behavior may be internal. For instance, some behaviors occur with
a circadian rhythm, meaning that they are triggered by the animal's internal body clock. You,
for example, tend to wake up and become active at roughly the same time each day. As you may
have discovered if you've ever taken a long flight, your body's alarm clock will still "go off" at
the same time even if the external cues change, which is what causes jet lag!

It's also common for behaviors to be triggered by a combination of internal and external cues
interacting. For instance, mating behaviors may be triggered in an animal only when it's in the
right hormonal state, an internal cue, and when it sees a member of the opposite sex, an external
cue.^55start superscript, 5, end superscript

Innate vs. learned behaviors

When we are trying to understand how a behavior develops and how it arose evolutionarily, one
important question is whether the behavior is genetically preprogrammed or acquired through
experience. Let's consider some vocab:

 Innate behaviors are genetically hardwired and are inherited by an organism from its
parents.

 Learned behaviors are not inherited. They develop during an organism's lifetime as the
result of experience and environmental influence.

Behavioral biologists have found that many behaviors have both an innate and a learned
component. So, it's generally most accurate for us to ask to what extent a behavior is innate or
learned.

Mostly innate behaviors

There are some examples of behaviors that are really and truly hardwired. These behaviors take
place in a highly predictable way in response to the right stimulus, even if the organism has
never before encountered that stimulus.
For example, an adult salamander will swim perfectly if it's placed in water, even if it never saw
water when it was young and has never watched another salamander swim.^55start superscript, 5,
end superscript In this case, the behavior of swimming can only be explained as something
genetically preprogrammed in the salamander.

Similarly, you—or any human—will rapidly jerk your hand away if you touch a very hot object.
This response is a reflex that's hardwired in the circuits of your sensory and motor neurons and
doesn't even involve your brain.^55start superscript, 5, end superscript

Partly innate, partly learned behaviors

In other cases, an organism is genetically programmed to develop a behavior, but the form the
behavior takes depends on the individual's experience.

One example is the learning of a song by a zebra finch or other songbird, as we saw above. All
male zebra finches will begin listening to and learning song at about the same age and practicing
and producing song at a slightly later age. Although this pattern is genetically determined, the
exact features of the song a bird sings will depend on the songs it hears during its learning
period.

Another, more familiar example is language acquisition in humans. Babies are preprogrammed
for language learning, but which language they learn depends on what they're exposed to during
their plastic, or formative, period.

Mostly learned behaviors

In other cases, behaviors are largely dependent on experience—they're learned—and can't be
fully explained by genetic preprogramming.

For instance, if a rat receives a food reward each time it pushes a lever, it will quickly learn to
push the lever in order to get the food. Similarly, if a cow gets an electric shock each time it
brushes up against an electric fence, like the one below, it will rapidly learn to avoid the
fence.^66start superscript, 6, end superscript Pushing a lever to get a reward and avoiding electric
fences are not hardwired in rats and cows but are, instead, learned behaviors the animals develop
through experience.
Image credit: Cow by Joi Ito, CC BY 2.0

If a behavior is learned rather than innate, it isn't directly inherited. But it does still depend on
genes. For instance, not all types of animals could learn to push a lever to get a reward. The rat's
capacity to learn this behavior depends on how its brain is wired, and the construction,
maintenance, and function of a rat brain are all determined by genes in the rat genome.

Check your understanding

Beach mice dig burrows in the sand when they are living in their natural environment. A beach
mouse burrow has a specific shape with a long escape tunnel that is different from the burrows of
closely related mouse species.

A young beach mouse is raised in captivity, without any access to dirt or sand or any chance to
observe burrowing adults. When given access to dirt, it immediately digs a burrow with the
normal shape for its species.^77start superscript, 7, end superscript

What type of behavior is burrow digging in the beach mouse?

Choose 1 answer:
 Choose 1 answer:


(Choice A)

Innate


(Choice B)

Learned


(Choice C)

Mostly learned, with a small innate component

Check

[Show hint.]

Natural selection shapes behavior.

To the extent that a behavior is genetically determined or relies on genes, it’s subject to
evolutionary forces, such as natural selection. In many cases, we can see how a behavior gives a
survival or reproduction benefit to an animal that performs it—in other words, the behavior
increases fitness. 
[What are natural selection and fitness?]

Here are some examples of behaviors that clearly increase fitness:

 Baby birds of many species instinctively open their mouths for food when the mother
returns to the nest.^88start superscript, 8, end superscript Birds with this heritable behavior will
tend to get fed more—and thus survive to adulthood more—than those that don’t.

 Mother greylag geese instinctively roll eggs back into the nest if they fall out.^88start
superscript, 8, end superscript Geese with this heritable behavior will tend to have more
offspring that survive to hatch than geese without the behavior.
 Zebra finch males learn songs while they are juveniles, young birds, and they use these
songs in courtship rituals. Birds with the heritable tendency to learn a song will obtain a mate
more often than those that don't.

An important point from the last example is that natural selection can act even when the behavior
itself is not inherited. A zebra finch doesn't inherit its song directly—it has to learn the song. But
its capacity and tendency to learn a song are genetically determined, so they can be subject to
natural selection.