1. Innate vs. Learned Behaviors

2. What is Behavior?
An activity or action that helps an organism survive in its environment.
Behavior can be thought of as the way an animal acts.
Blinking, eating, running, walking, flying, sleeping -are all examples of animal behavior.

3. Animals behave in certain ways for four basic reasons
to find food
to interact in social groups
to avoid predators
to reproduce

4. Stimulus A behavior comes in response to a stimulus.
A stimulus is any change in the environment that affects the activity of an organism or what causes an animal to act in a certain way.

5. Examples of Stimuli Stimuli may include: the sight of food
the sound of a potential predator
the smell of a mate
daily events such as nightfall
seasonal events such as decreasing temperatures.

6. Releasing Stimulus
Triggers the Organisms Nervous System to do a behavior

7. Innate Behaviors
Innate behaviors are not learned, you are born with them.
Fully functional the first time they are performed
No experience needed to acquire behavior
Inherited: Genes determine behavior

8. Examples of Innate Behaviors
1. Fish
Ability to swim
2. Chickens
Pecking
3. Lovebirds
Nest Building
4. Mammals
Suckling to get milk

9. Egg Rejection Egg Rejection by Cukoos is an innate behavior.
Brood Parasites:
birds which never build their own nests and instead lays their eggs in the nest of another species
leave those parents to care for its young.

10. Migration Migration is an innate behavior.
Migration is the seasonal movement of animals from one place to another.
This behavior allows the animals to take advantage of resources like food or water when they run low in another location.

11. Hibernation Hibernation is an innate behavior.
Hibernation is a resting state that helps animals survive the winter.
During hibernation a warm-blooded animal like a ground squirrel slows down its heart rate and breathing rate.

12. Fixed Action Pattern An innate pattern of behavior Immerged at birth
In tacked first time its done
Performance and maturation can shape it / improve it further
Always runs to completion

13. Examples of FAP’s A squirrel opening a nut
Rhesus Monkeys and Subordinate Gestures

14. Example of Human FAP’s
Smile, Frown, etc.
Yawning
Eye blinking

15. Learned Behaviors Behaviors animals are NOT born with
Acquired / Modified by experience
Behaviors are learned from observations and experience
Often learned from parents

16. Types of Learned Behavior
Non-Associative Learning
Habituation
Sensitization
Associative Learning
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning (Trial and Error)
Latent Learning
Imprinting
Insight (Reasoning)

17. Non-Associative Leaning
Organisms change their response to a stimuli without association with a positive or negative reinforcement.
2 Types:
1. Habituation
2. Sensitization

18. Habituation A decrease in response to a stimulus after repeat exposure
Less sensitive to stimuli
Eliminates responses that have no value on an animals survival or welfare.
Helps prevent waste of energy

19. Example of Habituation
Prairie dogs and humans
A bird and a stuffed cat
Snail and tapping

20. Sensitization
The increase that occurs in an organism’s responsiveness to stimuli following an especially intense or irritating stimulus.
More sensitive to stimuli
Depending on the intensity and duration of the original stimulus, the period of increased responsiveness can last from several seconds to several days.

21. Example of Sensitization
Sea snail that receives a strong electric shock
Will afterward withdraw its gill more strongly than usual in response to a simple touch.

22. Associative Learning
Organisms change their response to a stimuli with association of a positive or negative reinforcement.
2 Types:
1. Classical Conditioning
2. Operant Conditioning

23. Classical Conditioning
Experiment by Ivan Pavlov
Pavlov began to observe salivation in dogs
1. He would enter the room and place
meat powder or a food morsel on
tongue and wait for salivation to occur
2. He began to see that the dogs were salivating as soon as he entered the room, which was before any food was even in sight.
3. The dogs became conditioned by Pavlov to have expectations. When he entered the room, the dogs expected food; therefore, they began salivating in expectation

24. Neutral Stimulus
A neutral stimulus is something that normally would not produce any salivation
Pavlov chose to ring a bell since ringing a bell would not normally produce salivation in the dogs.
Pavlov began ringing a bell before placing the meat powder or item on the dog's tongue
Each and every time that the bell was rung, meat powder or food was given to the dog.
Pavlov repeated these experiments many, many times.
Eventually, the bell alone was enough to make the dogs salivate.
This proved that a neutral stimulus that elicited no response whatsoever from the dogs before was now causing a response- salivation.
The dog had learned to associate the sound of the bell with food.

25. Classical Conditioning in Summary

26. Unconditioned Stimulus
Stimulus that leads to a response with NO training
Ex. Food

27. Conditioned Stimulus
A former neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a given response after pairing with an unconditioned stimulus.
Ex. Bell

28. Unconditioned Response
Automatic Response to an unconditioned stimulus.
Ex. Salivate

29. Conditioned Response A learned response to a conditioned stimulus.
Ex. Salivate

30. What did this prove?
Pavlov's experiment proved that all animals could be trained or conditioned to expect a consequence on the results of previous experience.

31. Operant Conditioning
an unassociated behavior becomes associated with a reward
B.F. Skinner designed an apparatus called a "Skinner box" to test the interaction between UCS and CS

32. Skinner Box A rat was placed inside the Skinner box
If the rat pressed down a lever inside the box then the box would release a food pellet
Soon, the rat pressed the lever far more often than he would just by chance.
But with each instance of lever pressing, the operant is reinforced by reward with food.
The rat learns that pressing the lever is associated with food, and so he will increasingly press it.

33. Training Rats in a Skinner Box

34. Classical vs. Operant
In classical conditioning, the animal receives no benefit from associating the CS with the UCS.

35. Latent Learning
When an organism learns something in its life, but the knowledge is not immediately expressed.
Knowledge remains dormant until certain circumstances allow or require it to be expressed
Learning WITHOUT REWARDS!
No association with a positive or negative stimulus.

36. Example of Latent Learning
Place a rat in a maze with no food
The rat will simply run around the maze, familiarizing itself with the surroundings.
If you then return the rat to the same maze the next day and add food, the rat will find the food much more quickly then will a rat placed in the maze with food for the first time.

37. Imprinting
Process by which a social attachment to a particular object is formed during a critical time period.
Critical Time Period: Prior to birth to somewhere around 30 hr old
Early in life when recognition is critical
Irreversible
Work done by Konrad Lorenz

38. Insight Learning
Type of learning or problem solving that happens all-of-a-sudden.
Prior experience is crucial to learning
Investigations are difficult because the learning happens quickly
Identified by Wolfgang Kohler

39. Example of Insight Learning
Köhler placed a banana outside the cage of a hungry chimpanzee, Sultan, and gave the animal two sticks, each too short for pulling in the food but joinable to make a single stick of sufficient length.
Sultan tried unsuccessfully to use each stick
Later, after apparently having given up, Sultan accidentally joined the sticks, observed the result, and immediately ran with the longer tool to retrieve the banana.