ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR:

Behaviour is defined as the action which is expressed in an organism in response to the

stimuli. It’s actually for particular stimulus at a given situation the way the animal responds
is its behaviour. When we explain behavioural activity of an animal, it should start with the
Stimulus and end with the Response.

Now what is stimulus: Stimulus is the change in the environment in which the animal lives,
the change is whether in biotic or abiotic environment is capable of causing the animal to
react or to respond. Different Stimuli in Abiotic environment are: change in Pressure,
temperature, gravity.

Stimuli in Biotic environment are for example: The activities of other organisms in the
surrounding environment.

Animal Behaviour is of two types:

1. Innate: the behaviour which is inherited, thus it is automatic and consistent. They
have fixed action patterns, which generally do not change. Some innate responses
are even directed like Taxis, kinesis. There are even some complex innate behaviours
for example Migration; due to change in season or for the reproduction purpose the
animals navigate and its truly innate. Innate behavioural pattern also includes the
learning to form social attachments for a critical time period like reproduction, this
type of condition is known as Imprinting.
2. Learned: This type of behaviour is acquired from the experiences and they are
variable that means they can change with time and environment. In such cases the
conditioning may change their responses. Various tests and experiments are carried
out to check how the animal responds to particular stimuli with different
experiments carried out for different time periods. For example Operant conditions,
classical conditioning are carried out to check their associative learning process.
Operant learning is Trial and Error method for example response of an animal
towards reward or punishment.

Classical conditioning associates a neutral stimulus with a significant stimulus.

Habituation is also type of learning in which the animal gets habituated and thus do
not respond to a stimuli. Whereas problem solving is a type of learning in which animals can
reason a response to a problem.
Social behaviours: Animals exhibit different types of social behaviour

Agonistic: Threatening response or some time seven submissive response is observed. The
competitive behaviour with the other species in the habitat may stimulate such response
Territoriality is such kind of response aggravated to threaten the other species.

Dominance Hierarchy: Animals decide their social ranking among themselves this is also
called as Pecking order. It Means the dominant are kept higher class in the hierarchical
order.

Cooperation: involves the working in coordination. The animals generally tend to travel in
groups or packs for the safety purpose and reproductive purpose and work in coordination.

Altruistic behaviour: in which the animal tend to increase the survival of close relative,
passing their genes to the next generation. It may reduce the fitness of that animal itself,
but may increase survival of the recipient.