environment & behaviour

• animals adapt their behaviours to meet the challenges of their environment to ensure survival
• Find food

  • developing unique hunting or foraging strategies suited to their habitats
• Seek Shelter

  • building nests, burrows or specific habitats to protect themselves from predators and harsh conditions
• escape predators

  • using behaviours such as camouflage, mimicry or rapid escape responses
• reproduce

  • successfully timing reproduction to a favourable environmental conditions
  • display elaborate courtship behaviours
• cope with environmental changes

  • migration
  • hibernation
  • storing food to survive seasonal or unpredictable changes
• 3 types of adaptation

  • structural
  • behavioural
  • physiological
• heredity behaviours

  • behaviour that are genetically programmed and passed down through generations
• development

  changes in a individuals behaviour over their lifetime due to learning and experiences
• evolution

  changes in behaviour across generations due to natural selection
• Darwinian theory & behaviour core principles

  variation

  survival of the fittest/natural selection

  inheritance
• variation

  • not all individuals in a generation are the same
  • variation in traits is due to random genetic mutations
• survival of the fittest/natural selection

  Those best able to survive in the environment, reproduce

  According to the theory of natural selection – there is a competition for resources
• Inheritance

  Parents pass on traits to offspring
• variation

  competition

  adaptations

  selection
• domestication

  • process of adapting wild plants & animals for human use
  • domesticated animals are not tamed wild animals
  • animals kept in captivity developed genetic differences to become the domesticated species that we have today
• instinctive behaviour:

  • An instinct is the ability of an animal to perform a behaviour the first time it is exposed to the proper stimulus.
• learned behaviour:

  • Learning is a change in behaviour that occurs as a result of experience. Compared with innate behaviours, learned behaviours are more flexible. They can be modified to suit changing conditions
• trial and error

  • when an animals comes to associate particular behaviours with the consequences they produce
  • This tends to reinforce the behaviour (i.e. the behaviour is likely to be repeated if the consequences are pleasant, but not if they are unpleasant).
• examples of trial & error learning

  •Hunting behaviour ​

  •Courtship behaviour​

  •Rearing behaviour​

  •Migration behaviour
• observational learning

  •Animals often learn through observation, that is, by watching other animals. ​

  •Observational learning can occur with no outside reinforcement. The animal simply learns by observing and mimicking. ​
• social teaching

  • Social learning involves the transfer of information from a more experienced individual to a naive one. ​
  • A subset of observational learning ​
  • Social learning is most beneficial in stable environments, in which predators, food, and other stimuli are not likely to change rapidly. ​
• parental learning

  • Is when the parent will share knowledge and skills with their offspring to enhance their chance of survival. ​
  • example - Is when the parent will share knowledge and skills with their offspring to enhance their chance of survival. ​
• cultural learning

  • Cultural learning, also called cultural transmission, is the way a group of animals (or people) within a society or culture tend to learn and pass on information.