Transcript Animal Behavior - Mt. SAC Faculty Contact Directory

Animal Behavior
Biology 17
Why Study Animal Behavior???
Animal Behavior
History
Prehistoric Times
• Cave Drawings 40000 BC
Ancient Greek Period
• Greek Writing
• 1700 BC - Head injury and brain function
• 340 BC – Aristotle – Anatomist /Philosopher
• Historia Animalium
• Mutualism
• Tool use
• Brood Parasitism
Native Americans
• Southeast Texas - Bonfire
• Mass Killings -12000 years ago
The Three Foundations
• Medical Anatomy and Physiology
• Evolution
• Human Psychology
Medical Anatomy and Physiology
• Andreas Versalius (1543)
• De humani corporis fabrica
libri septem (On the fabric
of the human body in seven
books)
• Paul Broca (1861)
• Speech Production
The Evolutionary Foundation
• Charles Darwin (1859)
• The Origin of Species
• Natural Selection
• Sexual Selection
The Evolutionary Foundation
• George John Romanes (1884)
• Mental Evolution in
Animals
• Behavior could be studied
among different animals and
infer relationships
• Injective knowledge
Human Psychology
• Comparative Psychology (Psychologists)
• This school of thought advocates the use of
strict experimental procedures to study
observable behaviors (or responses) in
relation to environment (or stimuli)
• Ethology (Zoologists)
• This school of thought advocates studying
behavior under naturalistic conditions. It
explores animal behavior in the context of
animal anatomy and physiology. Ethologists
specifically considered the significance of
inherited elements of behavior alongside
learned components
Comparative Psychologists
• Ivan Pavlov (1904)
• Noble Prize
• Classical Conditioning
Comparative Psychologists
• John B. Watson (1930)
• Behaviorism
• Little Albert
Comparative Psychologists
• B.F. Skinner (1938)
• The Behavior of Organisms
• Operant Conditioning
• Skinner Box
Ethologists
• Karl von Frisch (1973)
• Noble Prize
• Bee Dance
Ethologists
• Konrad Lorenz (1973)
• Noble Prize
• Imprinting
• FAP
• Ethograms
Ethologists
• Niko Tinbergen (1973)
• Noble Prize
• The Study of Instinct
• FAP (with Lorenz)
• Four Questions
Ethologists
• Niko Tinbergen (1973)
• Four Questions
• Causation
• Development
• Evolution
• Function
• Mneumonic
• ABCDEF
• Proximate vs. Ultimate
Questions???
Other famous Behaviorists
Proximate and Ultimate Causes of Behavior
Proximate
• Immediate causes
• Mechanisms
Ultimate
• Evolutionary causes
• Adaptive value of the
behavior
Mastigias paupua
• Golden Medusa
• Migrates upward during the day and descends at
night
• Also migrate from the west to the east during the day
and return in the evening
Proximate Cause
• At night – undirected pulsing of bell to “taxis”
• This causes them to head east until they hit the
shadows on the east from the trees which cause them
to move west in the afternoon.
• Mechanism – “ocelli” – photosensitive neurons control
their swimming behavior and direct them toward the
light
Ultimate Cause
• Get most of their food from zooxanthelle (photosynthetic)
• Over millions of years, individuals that behaved in this
way received more food and were able to leave more
offspring with the ability to coordinate their muscle
contratctions to ensure light for the zooxanthelle