Innate & Learned Behaviors
This type of behavior appears fully functional the first time it is performed, without prior experience.
What is innate behavior?
This type of learning occurs when animals observe and copy the behavior of others.
What is social learning?
A mating system in which one male mates with multiple females.
What is polygyny?
The daily cycle of rest and activity that influences animal behavior.
What is a circadian rhythm?
The four main modes of animal communication.
What are visual, chemical, tactile, and auditory communication?
This form of learning involves an animal forming a strong attachment during a sensitive period.
What is imprinting?
This food-obtaining behavior includes recognizing, searching for, capturing, and eating food.
What is foraging?
Chemical substances used by animals to communicate, often in mating or alarm signaling.
What are pheromones?
When an animal moves from one place to another due to seasonal changes, this behavior is called ____
What is migration?
Name two types of circannual behaviors.
What is migration, reproduction, & hibernation?
This form of learning occurs when an animal decreases or stops responding to a repetitive stimulus that neither harms nor rewards it.
What is habituation?
This type of behavior helps other individuals in their population survive and reproduce, even at the expense of the individual's own fitness.
What is altruism?
This type of communication uses sound, such as bird songs and whale calls.
What is auditory communication?
Animal societies often establish these rankings to determine access to resources and mating opportunities.
What are dominance hierarchies?
In a dominance hierarchy, this term refers to the top-ranking individual who gets priority access to resources.
What is the alpha?
The process in which an animal learns to associate a neutral stimulus with a significant outcome thereby leading to a conditioned response.
What is classical conditioning?
This concept explains how altruistic behaviors can evolve by favoring the survival of close relatives.
What is kin selection?
In this type of mating system, one male pairs with one female for at least one breeding season, sometimes for life.
What is monogamy?
This behavior involves defending an area to secure resources like food, mates, and shelter.
What is territoriality?
A cat learning to avoid a hot stove after being burned once is an example of this learning type.
What is trial-and-error learning (operant conditioning)?
This phenomenon describes how an animal modifies its behavior by solving a problem without prior trial and error.
What is insight learning?
This principle explains how behaviors like cooperation, altruism, and dominance hierarchies can evolve because they increase an individual's or their relatives' chances of survival and reproduction.
What is natural selection?
Ritualized aggressive contests between males to gain access to mates and resources are called this.
What is agonistic behavior?
This daily biological cycle regulates behaviors like sleep and feeding, while its longer, seasonal counterpart influences behaviors like migration and reproduction.
What are circadian rhythms and circannual rhythms?
In classical conditioning, the learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus, such as a dog salivating when hearing a bell, is called this.
What is a conditioned response?