ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR

What is an animal behaviour?

Definition:
Externally visible activity of an animal, in which a coordinated pattern of sensory, motor and
associated neural activity responds to changing external or internal conditions” (Beck et al.,
1981).
“A response to external and internal stimuli, following integration of sensory, neural,
endocrine, and effector components. Behavior has a genetic basis, hence is subject to natural
selection, and it commonly can be modifi ed through experience” (Starr and Taggart, 1992).
“Observable activity of an organism; anything an organism does that involves action and/or
response to stimulation” (R. Wallace et al., 1991).
“Behavior can be defined as the way an organism responds to stimulation” (D. Davis, 1966).
“What an animal does” (Raven and Johnson, 1989).
The scientific study of animal behavior is also called ethology, a term used first by the
nineteenth-century French zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint Hilaire but then used with its
modern meaning by the American zoologist Wheeler (1902). Ethology is derived from the
Greek ethos, meaning “character.”
Instead of “ethology,” nowadays many authors use the words “animal behavior” or
“behavioral biology” when they refer to the scientific study of animal behavior.
Behavioral biology is the study of biological and evolutionary bases for behaviour.
Ethology is the scientific study of how animals behave particularly in their natural
environment.

Why do animals behave the way they do?

1. GETTING OR PROVIDING FOOD.
• A cat chases a mouse to catch it.
• A spider spins its sticky web to trap insects
• Mother dog nurses her puppies to feed them.

Such behaviour helps the animals get food for energy, make sure their young survive, or ensure
that they survive themselves.

2. INCREASE FITNESS
Behaviors that help animals or their young survive increase the animals’ fitness. Animals with
higher fitness have a better chance of passing their genes to the next generation. If genes control
behaviors that increase fitness, the behaviors become more common in the species. This is called
evolution by natural selection
Birds and wasps build nests to have a safe place to store their eggs and raise their young. Many
other animals build nests for the same reason. Animals protect their young in other ways, as well.
For example, a mother dog not only nurses her puppies. She also washes them with her tongue
and protects them from strange people or other animals. All of these behaviors help the young
survive and grow up to be adults

1. SURVIVAL AND PROTECTION

Rabbits run away from foxes and other predators to stay alive. Their speed is their best defense
.Lizards sun themselves on rocks to get warm because they cannot produce their own body heat.
When they are warmer, they can move faster and be more alert. This helps them escape from
predators.

History of the Study of Animal Behavior

Perhaps the most important concept in the study of animal behavior is Darwin’s idea of evolution
through natural selection, which provides the evolutionary framework necessary for the
development of animal behavior.
In the early 1900s, the two dominant approaches to the study of animal behavior were ethology,
centered in Europe, and comparative psychology, headquartered in the United States. Ethologists
focused primarily on the function and evolution of behavior. Because the context in which a
behavior is displayed is sometimes a clue to its function, ethologists often studied behavior under
field conditions. It followed from their interest in evolution that ethologists used a comparative
approach and studied primarily innate behaviors.
Early ethologists were interested in stereotyped pat-terns of behavior, considering them to be just
as reliable as morphological characters in defining a particular group. These stereotyped
behaviors were called fixed action patterns (FAPs). An FAP is triggered by a very specific
stimulus. That portion of the total stimulus that releases the FAP is called the sign stimulus or
releaser.
Because most behaviors are not so stereotyped as implied by the notion of FAP, they have more
recently been described as modal action patterns (MAPs). In contrast to the early ethologists,
comparative psychologists emphasized laboratory studies of observable, quantifiable patterns of
behavior. In general, they asked questions that concerned the development or causation of
behavior. Learning and the physiological bases of behavior were the focus of much of their
research. Many exciting advances were made in the study of learning. Thorndike developed the
techniques for study- ing trial-and-error learning, and Pavlov provided the methodology for
classical conditioning. Behaviorism is a school of psychology that proposes limiting the study of
behavior to actions that can be observed. B. F. Skinner, a prominent behaviorist, found that
patterns of behavior that are rewarded tend to be repeated or to increase in frequency, and he
concluded that the control of behav- ior was largely a matter of reinforcement.
The physiological basis of behavior is another traditional subject investigated by comparative
psychologists. Despite their emphasis on learning and physiology in the laboratory, some
comparative psychologists studied the social behavior of animals in the field.
In the 1960s, a new discipline emerged in the study of animal behavior; this discipline, called
sociobiology (or sometimes behavioral ecology), focused on the application of evolutionary
theory to social behavior. W. D. Hamilton articulated one of its central concepts, that of inclusive
fitness, in 1964. According to Hamilton, individuals behave in such a manner as to maximize
their inclusive fitness (i.e., their own survival and reproduction plus that of their relatives) rather
than acting simply to maximize their own fitness. Suddenly, certain issues that seemed
inconsistent with selection at the level of the individual, such as the evolution of sterile castes in
insects and altruistic behavior (behavior that benefits others at the expense of the performer),
were explain- able.
Approximately ten years after Hamilton’s paper, E. O. Wilson crystallized sociobiological ideas
in his landmark text, Sociobiology. Sociobiology and an interest in the survival value of behavior
dominated the study of animal behavior for approximately a decade, but it soon became apparent
that a complete understanding of behavior requires knowledge of both mechanism and function.
As new technologies became available, researchers began to explore the mechanisms of behavior
on a molecular or cellular level. Today, the study of animal behavior has returned to a more
balanced approach that considers mechanism and function.
Research is conducted in the laboratory, as well as in the field. Information gathered in this
research is being applied to assist the welfare of captive animals and to study conservation
biology.

Approaches to study Animal Behavior:

There are four approaches to study animal behavior
1) -Comparative Psychology
2) -Sociobiology
3) -Behavioral Ecology
4) –Ethology
1. Comparative Psychology
It tends to study animal behavior while looking at learning/learned behaviors and tends to work
in lab settings. Comparative psychology is the study of animals in order to find out about
humans. The underlying assumption is that to some degree the laws of behavior are the same for
all species and that therefore knowledge gained by studying rats, dogs, cats and other animals
can be generalised to humans

For example:
There is a long history of experimentation on animals and many new drugs and cosmetics were
first tested on non-humans to see what their effects were. If there were no obvious harmful side
effects then human trials would often follow
Experiment:
Harlow (1958 wanted to study the mechanisms by which newborn rhesus monkeys bond with
their mothers. The mothers of four rhesus monkey infants, living in small social groups, were
removed for 6-days when the infants were 30-32- weeks-old. Records were made of various
aspects of mother-infant interaction and infant behaviour before, during and after the separation
period. (2) During separation the animals' behaviour changed considerably, and could be
described as "depressed". They gave a higher number of who calls than before separation, and
showed less locomotor and play activity.

Advantages:
Studying other species often avoids some of the complex ethical problems involved in studying
humans. For example one could not look at the effects of maternal deprivation by removing
infants from their mothers or conduct isolation experiment on humans in the way that has been
done on other species.
2. Ethology
It tends to study animal behavior while looking at naturally occurring behaviors of animals (In
wild) to understand how they survive, disperse, interact with conspecifics and other organisms in
their communities, how they adjust/adapt to the environment and human intervention.
The term ethology was first defined as the study of animals in their natural habitat by Isidore
Geoffrey-Saint Hilarie in 1859

3. Sociobiology
Animal behavior within groups is known as social behavior. It the scientific study of the
biological (especially ecological and evolutionary) aspects of social behavior in animals and
humans.
In simple words it is study of social behavior of animals/ evolutionary basis of social behavior.

Example;
Fish school is simple aggregation of fishes. Movement is controlled by visual stimuli releaser
(the way in which one moves). They cannot see properly so form school. (tuna)

4. BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
Behavioral ecologists investigate following aspects of animals:

 Orientation and navigation: How animals find their way?

 Habitat selection: How they find a place to live?
 Foraging behavior: What foods they select for eating?
 The ways in which behavior can influence population biology.