For the 4th year students of Zoology

2012

Practical Animal Behaviour

About this Course

This course on animal behaviour provides a general introduction to the ways in which individuals react towards each other and the manner in which they interact with their environment.

Topics include animal learning, perceptual abilities, predation, the importance of genetics and heritability in controlling behaviour, and their significance in relation to the environmental impact on animals and examination of current issues in animal behaviour.

The course explores the behaviour of animals, ranging from the individual sensory and physiological mechanisms that are the basis of animal behaviour, to the behavioural dynamics of foraging, courtship, parental care, and social behaviour.

The main aims of this course are:

1. To understand the general concepts that govern the manner in which animals behave throughout their lives.

2. To appreciate the range of mechanisms by which animals adapt to their environmental conditions using

behavioural actions.

3. To achieve competence in the skills required to conduct scientifically meaningful studies of animal

behaviour.

What is Animal Behaviour?

- Any living organism lives in an environment is under many stimuli. These stimuli may be:

1- external or 2- internal.

- Animal in its response to these stimuli behaves the corresponding behaviour, while the response leads to the animal adaptation.

Stimulus Response Adaptation (behaviour).

Lab (1)

[1 ]What is Animal Behaviour?

[2" ]Tinbergen's four questions ",

[3 ]Some characteristics of animal behaviour

[4 ]Methods for studying animal behaviour

[5 ]Animal world

[1 ]What is Animal Behaviour?

Animal behaviour is the scientific study of everything animals do. It involves investigating the relationship between animals and their environment as well as to other organisms, and includes such topics as how animals find and defend resources, avoid predators, choose mates and reproduce, and care for their young.

[2" ]Tinbergen's four questions ",

People who study animal behaviour are typically trying to answer one or more of the following four kinds of questions about behaviour

"Tinbergen's four questions,"

1- What is the cause of the behaviour? What mechanism is underlying it? What "triggered" it just

now?

2- How did the behaviour develop within the individual's lifetime?

3- What function or functions does the behaviour serve?

4- How did the behaviour evolve over time?

Answers to questions about the causes of behaviour include both

- the external stimuli that affect behaviour

- the internal hormonal and neural mechanisms that control behaviour.

Does This Image Make You Hungry?

Questions about the development of behaviour focus on the ways in which behaviour changes over the lifetime of the

animal, and how these changes are affected by both genes and experience.

Questions about the functions of behaviour focus on both the behaviour's immediate effect on the animal and

on its adaptive value in helping the animal to survive or reproduce successfully in a particular environment.

Finally, questions about the evolution of behaviour focus on the origins of behaviour patterns and how these

change over generations.

[3 ]Some characteristics of animal behaviour

(A) Animal behaviour is indicative:

It is directed toward realization of certain aim or need, so it must diverse its behaviour to reach its desired aim.

(B) Animal behaviour is endogenous (spontaneous):

It is not just reaction with present external stimuli but animal in his behaviour always governed by internal stimuli. (physiological motivation) in the animal control the animal behaviour).

(C) Animal behaviour usually is an event among a long chain of related events: each event cannot be understandable without its relation with the next and previous events

Example: breeding cycle of birds

[4 ]Methods for studying animal behaviour

)1 (Direct observation and experiment:

it enables us to study animal behaviour from a logic aspect .

)2 (Causal analytical method:

as which followed in physical and physiological science.

Pavlov's Dogs Get Conditioned

[5 ]Animal world

Animal perceived life differently form human.

dogs can see colors but are at the same time colorblind. dogs see the colors of the world as basically yellow, blue and gray.Dogs are green-blind which is one form of red-green color

but they have great smell and

sharp hearing sensation.

Can dogs see colors? - Answer: Yes Are dogs colorblind? - Answer: Yes

2- Birds smell almost nothing, but they have a very sharp

sight.

3- Insects can see ultraviolet colours while human cannot.

Proximate and ultimate questionsabout Animal behaviour

• Two basic types of questions asked in Animal Behavior

• Proximate focus on mechanics of behavior).

• Ultimate focus on advantages (adaptive value) of the behavior

Proximate questions• Focus on things that cause or enable the animal to

perform the behavior.

• Questions about physical mechanisms. Focus on the genetic-developmental aspects and the sensory-motor aspects of the behavior.

Examples of proximate questions:

1.How mechanically does the behavior take place?

2.What factors in the environment stimulate the behavior?

3.How do the nerves and muscles generate the behavior?

4.How do the animal’s genes affect the behavior?

Ultimate questions

• Ultimate questions are questions about the evolutionary reasons for a behavior. They are questions about the selective processes that shape the behavior.

Examples of ultimate questions:

1.What is the purpose of the behavior?

2.In what way does the behavior increase an individual’s reproductive success?

3.Does the behavior increase an individual’s prospects of survival?

How do we answer behavioral questions?

• Examples from Niko Tinbergen’s work.

A proximate question.

How do beewolves find their way home?

Beewolves (type of wasp) nest in sandy areas.

Beewolf homing

• When leaving nest to hunt bees, female beewolf covers nest entrance with sand.

• How does she relocate it?• Beewolves circle next before leaving. • Do they remember landmarks? How would we

test this?

• Tinbergen cleared objects from around nest after beewolf left and found she struggled to relocate it.

Beewolf homing

Tinbergen also set up landmarks around nest for wasp to use.

Then moved landmarks. Result: wasp searched where landmarks suggested nest should be.

Tinbergen’s second experiment is more powerful than his first because it makes a more specific prediction.

Conclusion

• This experiment demonstrated that the wasp did use

landmarks to keep track of her nest

• The wasp depended on the arrangement of the

landmarks rather than the landmarks themselves

An ultimate question

Why do Black-headed gulls remove eggshells from their nests?

Gull egg removal

• Tinbergen hypothesized that broken eggshells draw attention to the nest and attract predators.

• Removing the eggshells should reduce predation risk.

Experiment

• Place broken eggshells at different distances from intact gull eggs.

• Does presence of egg shells affect chance of intact eggs being found?

Does presence of egg shells affect chance of intact

eggs being found?

Yes! Distance from Egg shell to egg Pct eggs eaten

15 cm 42%

100 cm 32%

200 cm 21%

Conclude that Black-headed gulls remove egg shells because this behaviour reduces egg losses to predators (and ultimately increase the bird’s reproductive success).

How did egg removing behaviour evolve?• Genetic mutation made a gull more likely to remove

egg shells from its nest.

• This gull had higher reproductive success than others

in population, so gene became more common and

ultimately became fixed in the population as alternative

genes became extinct.

• This is the process of natural selection.