Studies of Animal Behavior

By-
Karl Von Frisch
Nikolass Tinbergen
Konrad Lorenz

Presented By-
Vigyanshi
What is behaviour?
1. Behavior is everything a person does.
2. Behavior includes all those processes by which an animal senses the
external world and the internal state of its body and responds to
situation it perceives.
3. The way an organism responds to environmental stimuli.
4. “Stimulus response relationship”.
Ethology
• Study of animal behavior
• Two Greek words:
i. Ethos means habit
ii. Logos means study
• Geoffroy Saint Hillaire (1859) use this term to describe the
relationship of animal with environment, family and society.
• Since the beginning of 20th century the term is restricted only to the
study of behaviour of animals
Aim of Ethology

1. To find and establish the optimum environmental

condition
2. To know what is going within the animal mind and
understand the body language
3. To diagnose disease (normal Vs. abnormal)
4. To examine and treat animals (how to handle animals)
5. To achieve animal reproduction and raise livestock
(sexual and maternal behavior)
6. To achieve animal welfare which will lead to high
performance and production
7. To know the actual causes which induce the behavioral
disorders
Classification Of Animal Behavior
1. Inherited behavior (innate, unlearned, instinctive,
native)
• Important for survival and conservation of species
2. Acquired behavior (learned)
• Adopt useful method for survival within their environment
Inherited behavior

• Includes two types:

1. Behavior of maintenance
• Constant behavioral patterns needed to maintain animal
life (self-maintenance) such as ingestion, elimination,
rest and sleep
2. Reproductive behavior
• Behavioral patterns occurring during reproduction
needed to maintain animal species
• Sexual behavior
• Maternal behavior
Maintenance behaviors

• Ingestive behavior:
• Related to anatomy and physiology of each species
• Related to nature of food (herbivorous, carnivores,
omnivorous)
• Including feeding (ingestion of solid feed), drinking (ingestion
of water and milk)
• Understanding of ingestive behavior (how to search for, to
locate and to ingest food) is critical to animal production.
• Horse = cropping by incisors
• Cattle = eating by tongue
• Sheep and goat = incisors and lips
• Dog = gulping the food
Grooming Behavior (Body Care)
• Including:
• Care of the body (natural grooming)
• Thermoregulation (regulate body temperature)
• Self-Grooming (Auto-grooming)= animal take care of
its own body through licking and rubbing (parts that
can reach)
• Body licking, nose licking, rolling, scratching
• Function
• Keep body clean (One good indicator of general health)
• Free from ecto-parasites
• Free from foreign objects (faces, urine, mud)
• Reduce risk of diseases
• Mutual grooming (social or allo-grooming)
• One animal take care of another animal (herdmates)
• Function (biological and social):
• Remove ecto-parasites from parts that animal can not
reach
• Take care of wounds
• Reward for the groomer (obtain salt and vitamin D)
• Promote and cement relationship between individuals
• Reduce aggression and tension
• Maintain social structure
Reproductive behaviors
• The activities or actions during reproduction includes:
• Sexual behavior:
• Male sexual behavior
• Pre-copulatory (courtship/libido)
• Copulatory (erection, mounting, ejaculation, dismounting)
• Post-copulatory (quiet period, flehmen response)
• Female sexual behavior
• Estrous cycle (length, type, signs)
• Ovulation (type, time)
• Best time of mating
• Maternal behavior (care-giving behavior, Epimeletic, attentive)
Animal Communication
• Signaling between one animal & another
• Greeting e.g. sniff, hug, kiss
• Aggression e.g. charge, bite, hit, fight
• Non-aggression e.g. patting, head butting, stroking
• Verbal signaling (vocalization)
• E.g. bark, howl, hoot, chirp
• Non-verbal signaling
• E.g. body, head, ear, & / or tail position
• Showing teeth, smiling, sign language
Acquired behaviors
• Domestic animals have ability to learn
• They adopt new useful methods for survival within their
environment
• Animals acquire many behavioral patterns through learning
• Learning
• Development of behavior through experience
• Determine final shape of innate behaviors
• 7 types of learning
Types of learning
• Habituation
• Is waning (Fading) of a new response to a repeated
stimulus
• Simplest form of learning
• Occur rapidly if stimuli are given close together
• Importance of habituation
• Filtering large amounts of information received from
surrounding environment
• Waning of the responses of farm animals to handling
procedures and housing conditions
• Animal learns to ignore frequent, harmless stimulus
• E.g Birds on highway, habituation to Cars
• Associative learning
• Animal learns to associate unrelated response with a
stimulus
• Two types of associative learning:
• Classical conditioning (CR type I, Pavlovian
conditioning)
• In which animal associate a response with a certain
stimulus as a
result of reinforcement
E.g. Pavlov’s experiments
• Bell ringing, food, salivation
• Bell ringing salivation (even if no food is given)
Pavlov’s experiment
How Dog Training Works
Reinforcement
• In conditioning animals modify their behavior in such way to
obtain maximum reward and avoid punishment
• Positive reinforcement…. Giving animal favorite food
• Negative reinforcement…. Punishment
Classical conditioning
• E.g. 1. suckling by calf, squeezing of teat for release of oxytocine.
• 2. Jangling of milking equipments, sight of calf for release of
oxytocine.
Operant conditioning
• In which animal learn to behave in a certain way through repeated
practice
• Trail & error learning- animal tests conditions for desired response
• In which animal is motivated by thirst, hunger, fear.
• E.g. Skinner box (B.F. Skinner)
• Animal learns that a behavior gets a certain response
• E.g. rat presses lever to get food
Imprinting

• A process that occurs when an animal learns to make a particular response to only
type of animal or object
• Both innate and learned
• Occurs during a definite critical time period (within first 36 hr)
• Irreversible (once learned, can’t be changed)
• Conard Lorenz with duckling• Animals learn to follow their mothers just after
parturition or hatching (attachment behavior)
• Lambs and colts are most ones can be imprinted to
other animal, human, objects
Insight learning (Reasoning)

• Highest form of learning

• The immediate understanding, and response to new situation
without trail and error
• Was identified by Wolfgang kohler while studying the behavior of
chimpanzee
• Insight learning is the abrupt realization of a problem's solution
• insight learning is often at the root of creative, out of the box,
thinking (Inventions and innovations)
Imitation (observational learning)

• Animal learns by observing another animal

• Albert Bandura, a Canadian-born psychologist, gets credit for
developing and popularizing observational learning theory.
• observational learning can be understood via four distinct
concepts:
• attention, retention, motor reproduction, and reinforcement