Chapter 17:1Pages 454-459

“Types of Behavior”

I. Innate Behavior

***Dogs treat people as part of their own packA. Behavior is the way an organism acts toward its

environment. (You are the stimulus that causes your dog to bark and wag its tail…your dog’s reaction to you is a response.) Was this behavior learned or did your dog behave this way on his own?

B. Innate Behavior is Inherited:1. A behavior that an organism is born with is an

innate behavior …such behaviors are inherited and they do not have to be learned.

2. Innate behavior patterns are usually correct the first time an animal responds to a stimulus.

a. Kittiwakes are seabirds that nest on narrow ledges… the chicks stand still as soon as they hatch.

b. The chicks of a related bird, the herring gull, which nests on the ground, move around as soon as they can stand.

c. A kittiwake chick can’t do this because one step could mean instant death….They hatch already knowing they must not move around.

3. Animals that have short life spans often have patterns of innate behavior.

a. The lives of most insects, for example, are too short for young to learn from the parents…In many cases, the parents have died by the time the

young hatch.b. And yet, every insect reacts automatically to its

environment…A moth will fly toward a light, and cockroach will run away from it….They do not spend time learning what to do.

c. Innate behavior allows animals to respond quickly to a stimulus in their environment without

taking the time to choose a proper response.

B. Reflexes1. The simplest innate behaviors are reflex

actions…an automatic response that does not involve the brain.

a. Sneezing, shivering, yawning, jerking your hand away from a hot surface and blinking your eyes when something is thrown toward you are all reflex actions. All animals have reflexes.

3. During a reflex, a message passes from a sense organ along the nerve to the spinal cord and back to the muscles…The message does not go to the brain.

a. You are aware of the reaction only after it has happened…When you respond reflexively, you do not think about how you will respond.

b. Your body reacts on its own, without your thought processes…A reflex is not the result of conscious thought.

C. Instincts1. An instinct is a complex pattern of innate

behavior.2. A spider…spinning a web is complicated,

and yet spiders spin webs correctly on the first try…Sea turtles instinctively head for the sea as soon as they hatch .

3. Unlike reflexes, instinctive behaviors may have several parts and takes weeks to complete.

4. Instinctive behavior begins when the animal recognizes a stimulus and continues until all

parts of the behavior have been performed.

II. Learned Behavior

A. Animals have both innate and learned behaviors …they develop during an animal’s lifetime.

1. Learning is the result of experience or practice… You aren’t born knowing how to play the piano; you must learn this behavior through practice.2. In animals, the more complex their brains, the

more their behavior is the result of learning. a. Instinct almost completely determines the behavior of insects, spiders and other arthropods.

b. But fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals all can learn.

3. Why is learning important for animals?a. Learning allows animals to respond to new situations.b. In changing environments, animals that have the ability to learn new behavior are more likely to survive.c. This is especially important in animals with long life spans because the longer an

animals lives the more likely it is that the environment in which it leaves will change.

4. Learning can modify instincts…grouse and quail chicks leave their nest the day they hatch…They can run and find food, but they can’t fly…when something moves above them, they crouch down and keep perfectly still until the danger is past…They will crouch without moving even if it is a falling leaf.

5. Older birds have learned that leaves will not harm them, but they, too freeze when a hawk moves

overhead.

B. Imprinting:1. Learned behavior includes imprinting, trial and

error, conditioning and insight.

2. Have you ever seen young ducks following their mother??? This is an important behavior because the adult bird has had more experience in finding food, escaping predators, and getting along in the world… Imprinting is a type of learning in which an animal forms a social attachment to another organism within a specific time period after birth or hatching.

2. Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian naturalist, developed the concept of imprinting…working with geese, he discovered that a gosling follows the first moving object

it sees after hatching….it recognized the moving object as its parent.

a. It later recognizes similar objects as members of its own species…This behavior works well

when the first moving object is an adult goose…but goslings hatched in an incubator may see a human first may imprint on him or her.

b. Animals that becomes imprinted toward animals of another species never learn to recognize

members of their own species.

C. Trial and Error1. Can you remember when you learned to ride a

bicycle? Your probably fell many times before you learned to balance on the bicycle….But after a while you could ride without having to think about it. (Skating is another example)

2.Behavior that is modified by experience is called trial and error learning.

a. Both invertebrates and vertebrates learn by trial and error…When baby chicks first learn to feed themselves, they peck at many spots before they get any food…they seem to learn to peck only at grain.

b. particular stimulus may cause a different response in the same animal at different times…

When a cat sees food, it will eat it if it’s hungry, but if it has just eaten, it will ignore the food.

c. For a hungry rat…the motive to learn a maze may be the food at the end of the maze…motivation is something inside an animal that causes the animal to act…which is necessary for learning to take place.

D. Conditioning1. Animals often learn new behaviors by

conditioning…behavior is modified so that a response previously associated with one stimulus becomes associated with another.

2.Russian scientist Ivan P. Pavlov was the first person to study conditioning…He knew that the sight and smell of food made hungry dogs secrete saliva.

a. Pavlov added another stimulus…He rang a bell when he gave the dogs food.

b. The dogs began to connect the sound of the bell with food…Then secreted saliva when the bell was rung even though he did not show them food.

c. The dogs were conditioned to respond to the bell.

2. An American psychologist John B. Watson demonstrated that responses of humans can also be

conditioned.a. In one experiment, he struck a metal

object each time an infant touched a furry animal.

b. The loud noise frightened the child…In time, the child became frightened by the furry animal when no sound was made.

E. Insight1. How does behavior learned in the past help

a animal when it is confronted by a new situation?

2. Suppose you are given a new math problem to solve…Do you use what you have previously learned in math to solve the problem? If you have, then you have used a kind of learned behavior called insight… a form of reasoning that enables animals to use past experiences to solve new problems.

3. In Wolfgang Kohler’s experiments with chimpanzees, a bunch of bananas was placed too high for the chimpanzees to reach.

a. Chimpanzees piled up boxes found in the room, climbed up on the box, and reached the bananas.b. Most of adult human learning is also based on insight.

Summary

***Behavior that an animal is born with is innate behavior. Other

animal behaviors are learned through experience.

***Reflexes are the simplest innate behaviors. An instinct is a

complex pattern of innate behavior.

***Learned behavior includes imprinting, in which an animal forms a

social attachment soon after birth. Behavior modified by

experience is learning by trial and error. Conditioning occurs

when a response associated with one stimulus becomes

associated with another. Insight uses past experiences to solve

new problems.