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1. Concepts of animal behavior - for print (1) (2)

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231 views18 pages

1. Concepts of animal behavior - for print (1) (2)

1. Concepts of animal behavior - for print (1) (2)

Uploaded by

abaya.marga-ug
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Concepts of animal behaviour

Reta Tesfaye (DVM, MTADM)


For 5th year DVM students, 2023
What is behavior?
• Behavior is the coordinated responses of
whole living organisms to internal and/or
external stimuli.
• Behavior is a property of all living things. The
only animal not behaving is a dead animal!
• Although we may feel that a sleeping seal or
a motionless sea-snake are doing nothing,
they are in fact behaving.
• Animal behavior is essential for survival
Examples of animal behaviour
• Social Behavior (Cooperation and hunt
Eat
Communication)
Play

learn
Call
live

• Migration
• hibernation
Examples of animal behaviour
• Aggression: competing for resource (food,
mates), Defensive, territorial, dominance ….

competing for resourcePredatory

• Mating
• Parental Care
Why animal behaviour?
• To improve animal welfare
animal behaviour is helpful in informing us of
what an animal may need/preferences/dislike,
Inform good/bad welfare condition of the
animal?

•To better interact with animals


Why animal behaviour?
• To get the most out of Production animals
Handling (calm, gentle and consistent)
Provide environment that allow to express
natural behaviour
Avoid negative interaction

• Conservation of wild animals


Animals in modern Zoo
• Animal’s behaviour is helpful in informing us
of what an animal may need.
Approaches to the study of animal behavior
Observation
involves gathering data on what animals do
no attempt to manipulate or control any
ethological or environmental variable.
Many studies in animal behaviour, especially
in wild animals, are observational.
are important for discovering r/n between
different behaviours, and between behaviour
and other factors.
• Reduce animal stress
Approaches to the study…
• However, it is difficult to show causation
using observations alone.

• What animals do, how and why they do


• Ex: How horses forage.
Approaches to the study…
• Experimentation
• Is a deliberate manipulation where a
researcher makes some intervention or
interference to test a hypothesis.
•
• comparative analyses
• why there is variation in behavioural
strategies amongst species?
• compare performances across different
species and environments.
Approaches to the study…
• Theoretical model
• behavioural scientists can use theoretical
models (mathematical equations and
computer programs).
• These are actually not used to test
hypotheses but instead to generate them, and
are useful because they can often be applied
to many animal species.
• Ex: optimal foraging models
• What food items should a forager eat? 1, 2,3,
…N
Approaches to the study…
• How long should a forager stay in a certain food
patch?
• How does variance in food supply affect a
forager’s decision about what food types to eat?

All four methods - observational studies,


experiments, comparative studies and modelling,
can be used independently.

But some of the best science in animal behaviour


comes from research that combines them.
Tinbergen’s four questions
• Studying animal behaviour starts with
asking good questions.

• 4 questions to ask why an animal performs


a behavior
Tinbergen’s four questions…
1. Causation
• What causes the behaviour to be performed?
• Which stimuli elicit or what physiological
mechanisms cause the behaviour?

• EX: drinking water twice in a hot summer day.


The stimulus for this behaviour is therefore the
feeling of thirst. This is an internal stimulus,

• H2O in the body salt == >hormone release== >Thirst


Tinbergen’s four questions…
Ex: What causes a bird to sing right now?

• How the song is produced, its


physiological and neuronal control or the
way the song elements are organized.
Tinbergen’s four questions…
2) development
• How has the behaviour developed during
the lifetime of the individual?
• How behaviour of a young animal changes
as it matures and what factors, internal
and external, affect this process and its
end point
• Ex: How did the bird come to sing in that
particular way?
Tinbergen’s four questions
• Did it learn the song? From whom and when?
Did it need to practice it to be able to sing like
this? Or does song develop without any
obvious effect of learning?
• How courtship behaviour improves with age
• How predators learn to avoid toxic or
dangerous prey with experience
Tinbergen’s four questions
3) its function and survival value,
Why is the animal performing the behaviour?
In which way does the behaviour increase the
animal’s fitness (i.e. its survival and
reproduction)?
• What is the benefit a bird has, when it is
singing?
• Can it better defend a territory, or is it more
attractive singing in specific ways?
• migration of bird?
Tinbergen’s four questions…
(4) its evolution - its phylogenetic origin.
How it has changed over the course of
evolutionary time.
• How does the song relate to songs of
ancestral species?
• Did certain aspects of the song evolve
more recently?
• How does the song relate to song in
related species?

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