Ethology is the study of animal behavior
Ethology is the study of how animals behave. Scientists that study ethology are called ethologists. There have been many famous ethologists over the past two centuries that have greatly advanced the field. To the right are three very famous ethologists: Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen.
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Innate vs. Learned Behaviors
Animal behaviors have historically been put into two categories: innate behaviors and learned behaviors. Innate behaviors are behaviors that animals do not have to learn. These behaviors are programmed into their genes and are sometimes called instinctive behaviors. A famous example of an innate behavior is imprinting. Konrad Lorenz found that when goslings (baby geese) first hatch, they look for the first moving object close to them and assume that object is their mother and imprint on it. They will then follow that moving object for the rest of their lives and will not recognize their biological mother. Konrad is shown to the left with goslings that have imprinted on him following him around. Other innate behaviors include spiders spinning webs, babies crying, and dogs drooling around food.
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Learned behaviors are behaviors that animals are born not knowing how to do. They need to learn how to do these behaviors either by trial and error or by observing older animals. An example of a learned behavior is flossing in macaques. These macaques take human hair and floss their teeth with it. The older individuals teach the younger individuals how to floss their teeth this way. Click the video to the right to see these macaques floss and teach their young.
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Sometimes, behaviors have to be learned within a certain time frame, called a sensitive period. For instance, birds have to learn to sing the correct song for their species. If they learn the wrong song, they may not be able to attract a mate. Birds have a brief window of time when they can learn their species' song. Sometimes this window is only once when they are young, like the white-crowned sparrow, and sometimes this window repeats every year, like the canary. Listen to the white-crowned sparrow's song in the video on the left.
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Associative learning is the type of learning that you probably use to train your dog. Associative learning is when the animal associates some behavior they do with some outcome, for example, when your dog sits and you give him a treat. The dog learns to associate his behavior of sitting with the outcome of getting a treat. This type of learning is very useful to animal trainers, but it is also useful to animals in the wild, as demonstrated by the blue jay to the right. This bird has just eaten a monarch butterfly. Monarch butterflies eat milkweed plants which makes the monarchs unpleasant for birds to eat. When a bird eats a monarch butterfly, it learns to associate eating the monarch with an unpleasant feeling, which dissuades the bird from eating another monarch butterfly.
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Communication
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Animals communicate information to each other in a variety of ways. Many animals do not have a spoken language like we do. So they must have other ways of communicating with each other. Cats and other animals communicate through scent. They release pheromones under their tails that tell each other how they are doing. This is why your cat may put his bottom in your face. He's trying to tell you how he feels, but he doesn't know that you can't smell his pheromones. Dogs also communicate through scent, but they use sounds and body language too. Bees have an interesting way of communicating with each other that Karl von Frisch discovered. A bee that has found a good stash of nectar can come back to the hive and tell other workers where the nectar is by dancing. This dance, called the waggle dance, tells other bees which direction and how far away the nectar is from the hive.
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Animal Cognition
One of the most interesting topics in behavior is animal cognition, the study of if, and how, animals think. Animal cognition is also one of the most difficult aspects of behavior to study. To understand why, try to figure out what the person next to you is thinking. Without asking them, how do you know if you are right? Scientists usually can't ask animals what they are thinking, which is what makes this such a difficult topic. One of the greatest breakthroughs in this field is teaching animals a language that humans can understand, like sign language. If an animal knows sign language, we can just ask them what they are thinking. Many people used to think that animals didn't do much thinking at all, that they just acted on instinct. Recently, that view has been challenged by animals like Koko, the gorilla that can form complete sentences and carry on conversations with consistent grammar in sign language, and Alex, the grey parrot who could articulate complex, and sometimes abstract, thoughts in spoken English. Check out their videos to the right. These animals have changed the way the world thinks about animal cognition. People are now beginning to realize that humans are not the only animals that think. Of course, this method won't work for every animal, but it's a good start.
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