What is Animal Behavior?
A. Everything animals do, including movement and other activities and underlying mental processes
B. The aggregate of the responses or reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation
C. Behavior is everything an animal does and how it does it.
Simple Reflex
instinctive reflexes (no conscious thought or learning). blinking, breathing, swallowing
Complex Reflex
Partially instinctive but with full conscious thought or learning, migration, grooming, parental care
Ethology
is the scientific study of animal behavior, its cause and its biological function.
Applied ethology
focuses on the study of the behavior of domestic and captive animals, oskar heinroth
First person known to write on animal behavior
Aristotle
Tinbergen's Four Questions
1. Causation - immediate causes stimulate certain behavior, exogenous vs endogenous
2. Ontogeny - Does the behavior develop during the lifetime of the individual? - Does the behavior change with age?
3. Function - how does it participate in the evolution
exogenous vs endogenous stimuli
exo - external, presence of food, sex mate
endo - hormones
Tinbergen's Four Questions: Tail Wagging
1. Causation - Sensory cells detect a human/animal companion and send impulse to CNS.
Dog recognized the companion and decided to wag the tail
2.it is instinctive behavior (genetically programed) but dog has to be able to
identify and recognize companions
For behavior to be shaped by evolution it must meet ALL of the following criteria:
1. Variable - the trait must vary across individuals of the population (Identical = no evolution)
2. Heritable - transmitted across generations (phenotypes are fully controlled or influenced via genetics)
3. Affect the natural selection - must affect the
Evolution works only
only on behaviors that are already present in the population, and cannot invent new behavior in the face of a NEED
A behavior that used to serve a certain function in ancestral life, will gets slightly modified (or still the same), loses its original func
Evolution usually select these optimal behaviors:
1- Optimal territory size
2- Foraging strategy
3- Fight
How Do Genes Act on Behavior?
predispositions rather than determinants
Genes control...?
The development of CNS
Number + activity of neurons
Presence and level of neurotransmitters, receptors and enzymes
in the CNS is controlled via genes
Genes are made of what two stimuli
environment and learning
learned behaviors are hard to
get rid of due to
Learning capacity is totally controlled by a
genetic control
Genetic traits are ________ rather than determinants of behavior
predispositions
Influence of genes vs environment :
sexual preference (mate choice) through cross-fostering
sheep raised by goats showed preference for goats
Conventional indicators of domestiacation
Compressed skull
Shortened legs
mitochondrial DNA --reproductive isolation to domesticate
reproductive isolation
Isolation of a certain population of wild animals, which then started to inbred and grow resulting in a closed population of animals (sharing a similar mitochondrial DNA) from which domesticated animals arise and they differs form the wild population.
Can you give an example of behavioral traits that humans have selected for, during domestication?
Fearfullness, Tameness, Social Tolerance
Domestication resulted in subtle differences in behavior
NO new behaviors were added to the behavior repertoire of any domestic species
Only few behaviors patterns were disappeared completely.
Differences in behavior between wild and domesticated animals are more likely to be attributed to
modified stimulus threshold level. i.e., what level of the stimulus causes the behavior to happen.. basenji
2- What is behavior?
The ability to respond to stimuli is characteristic of all living organisms
Definition of behavior
The aggregate of the responses or reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation.
simple reflex mechanism
Processed by a sensory neuron gives information to a motor neuron or might involve areas of the CNS but NOT conscious, breathing, chewing
Stages of Domestication
1. wild animals
2. human curiosity
3. taming
4. accept partial/full human control
5. inbreeding until fully domesticated
burning skin
pain receptors in skin, into cell neuron, muscle contraction. reflex
Complex behaviors
multiple sensory inputs and require processing by the several areas of the brain. Motor response(mating), hormonal response,(milk let-down) emotional response(maternal), memory event(mimicing sounds). japanese puffer
Chain sequence of behavior?
perception, coordination, effector, response
Coordination
coordinates actions to perform the behavior
Effector
carries out the response and prepared for the event, i.e., stomach prior to eating, vocal cord and larynx to produce mating song)
Response
final behavior, collection of different effectors all together, can be a simple or complex behavior
perception =
stimulus + receptor
types of receptors
auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, visual
What do thermoreceptors do?
detect temperature: signal the animal to sweat, seek shade, shiver, or huddle
Mechanoreceptors
changes and designates how much force is being used
Chemoreceptors
changes in amounts of some chemical compounds -- rising CO2 stimulates breathing
The main 2 internal pathways orchestrate behavioral responses are
Neurological (Nervous system)
Endocrinological (Endocrine or hormonal)
combined = neuroendocrine control
The external factor that impact or influence behavior is
Environment
Hypothalamus connects
nervous system with the endocrine system through Pituitary gland
Neurosecretory cells (Secretory nerve cells)evef
are neurons that
produce hormones either directly into the blood stream or into a portal circulation to the Pituitary gland.
Types pf neurosecretory cells
Secrete effector hormones directly into the blood stream -- stores in posterior pituitary gland
Secrete releasing hormones into the portal circulation of the Pituitary gland -- regulates secretion of the anterior pituitary gland
Hypothalamus regulates
the interaction between behavioral, physiological, and nervous mechanisms
Regulate Autonomic nervous system (Homeostasis):
hypothalamus receives ...
emotion, memory and other nervous stimuli (nervous) >> secretes hormones (physiology) >> Control (behavior) >> think about milk let down (received stimuli) >> hormonal secretion >> milk let down
ADH
regulate water reabsorption and blood pressure
Oxytocin
milking
how the sound of the milking machine stimulates the milk let down
external stimuli >> secretes hormones >> open the milk ducts and teat canal >> contraction of the muscle fiber surround the milk secretory acinus
Think about possible management practices to prevent udder infection post milking before the teat canal is fully closed?
dipping tetes in wax, other dip
oxytocin trigger
stimulate sensory neurons on the cervix >> stimuli perceived by the Hypothalamus >> secrete Oxytocin from posterior pituitary gland >> stimulate contraction of the smooth muscle fibers of the uterus
Because epigenetic modifications are not changes to the sequence of base pairs in the DNA, these modifications cannot be passed along to the next generation.
F - can be passed down
Anterior lobe
...