2.1 e - measuring & recording animal behaviour

• ethograms and time sampling behaviour are used to compare behaviour of different individuals of a species
• action patterns are the units that behaviour is broken into in order to study and measure it
• action patters are often defined in the following characteristics

  • the form of an action
  • the velocity of an action
  • the duration of movements held in different positions
  • the amplitude of the action
  • the orientation of the behaviour towards an object
• focal sampling

  watch an individual or a dyad across a period of time and record the behaviour and the time it occurred (in seconds)
• focal sampling gives good detailed information about a certain animal
• scan sampling

  record what every animal in the group is doing every 15 or 30 second intervals
• scan sampling gives less detailed information as its more of an averaging procedure
• an ethogram lists a species specific behaviours to be oberved and recorded in the study
• recording the duration of each behaviour, and the total observation time, allows the proportion of time spent on each behaviour to be calculated in the time budget
• time budgets use start times to calculate the duration of each behaviours to calculate proportion of time spent on each behaviour
• latency, frequency and duration must be considered in a time budget
• latency

  the time between the stimulus occurring and the responsive behaviour
• frequency

  the number of times a behaviour occurs within the observation
• duration

  the length of time each behaviour occurs during the observation period
• anthropomorphism

  is applying human activity, emotions and traits to animals
• anthropomorphism misinterprets behaviours and invalidates the conclusions