welcome to ethology and behavioral ecology. why do we study animal behavior?

Welcome to Ethology and Behavioral Ecology

Why Do We Study Animal Behavior?

To understand the natural world.Why Build Bowers?

VogelkopAmblyornis inornatus

MacGregor's

Why Decorations?

Satin bowerbird bower and court

Greatbowerbird

To Better Understand Ourselves.

Where Did “Consciousness”

Come From?

Part 1: An Historical Overview of the Scientific Study of Animal Behavior

Interest in Behavior -- A Rough Indicator

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1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

Year

# Psychologists in USA

The Ancients

Needed to observe animals for obvious reasons but this was not formally systematized and generally not communicated.

Greeks -- Aristotle and the scala naturae or chain of being

• Continuum with types grouped by similarity

• A central aspect of the chain was continuity

of the animal and human mind

History of Animal

Behavior

Sources:

•Evolution

•Philosophy

•Neural-medical

"Proximate" and "Ultimate" approaches

The Birth of Evolutionary Approaches to Behavior

The evolutionary study of animal behavior may have begun before Darwin with Herbert Spencer (1858) -- Principles of Psychology –

• continuity of mental states

• ranking again – reflex to volition.

• not surprisingly, he was a Lamarckian.

Darwin and Animal Behavior

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)Expressions of the Emotions of Man and Animals (1872)

Darwin tended to rely on anecdotes that he fitted to his theories

• Serviceable associated habits (associative learning)

• Antithesis – animals outwardly express their inner emotions

Image from Goodenough, McGuire, and Wallace. Perspectives on Animal Behavior. Second Ed. 2001. Wiley

Early Nature-Nurture Dicotomy

Nature -- behavior springs from inherited factors and is little (if at all altered by experience).

Nurture -- behavior comes from experience (learning) and these behaviors are little influenced by genetic differences in animals.

The notion is that the two sources of behavior (and other elements of the phenotype) are separate -- the cause is one or the other.

The Years After DarwinLate 1800s -- Romanes

• Emphasized continuity of animals and humans

• Injective knowledge – knowing what is going on inside of animal by knowing what you feel in the same situation and when you perform similar actions.

• He used his subjective interpretations to make a table of emotions of where various emotions first arose

Romanes List

Emotion

Shame, deceit

Revenge, anger

Grief, hate, cruelty

Pride, resentment

Sympathy

Affection

Jealous, anger

Pugnacity, industry, curiosity

Sexual feelings

Surprise, fear

Animals in which the emotion first appears

Apes, dogs

Monkeys, elephants

Carnivores, rodents

Birds

Ants, wasps and bees

Crustaceans

Fish

Insects and spiders

Molluscs

Larvae of insects, annelids

Naturalistic Animal Behavior in the Early 1900s

Loeb -- everything was a forced movement or tropism toward or away from stimuli

Craig on stereotyped behaviors (1918)

consummatory – the act itself -- Craig believed it to consist of very fixed behavioral components

"drive" -- animal is motivated

appetitive (variable) brings animal into proper stimulus situation -- shows plasticity and purpose

tendency for a quiescent period afterwards