Steven Crane Compiled Section Handouts. Human Behavioral Biology 2012

Ethology

Where did ethology emerge from?

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  A philosophical psychology of the early 1900s led to behaviorism with Watson and Skinner.
  

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  Behaviorism is all about stimulus-response, reward-punishment, and how these lead to observable, quantifiable behaviors. It's about radical environmentalism: almost nothing innate; all about the environmental shaping that explains behavior and life outcomes.
  
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  Behaviorists were really in to reinforcement theory.
  

  Positive reinforcement	Increase likelihood of repeating a behavior
  Positive punishment	Decrease likelihood of repeating a behavior

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  Very into simplified, clean experiments in highly controlled laboratory settings. Uniformity.
  

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  Then we get an ethology backlash which is much more about what?
  

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  Variety in nature
  

• Interviewing animals in their own language

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  Making sense of animal behaviors only in their natural context/environment
  

Ethology is then about a few basic questions

What does the behavior look like?

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  We look at fixed action patterns (similar to reflexes and instincts, but more elaborate).
  

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  A small, coordinated set of movements with an interconnected social meaning. An innate behavior.
  
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  Performed without prior experience but experience can shape the FAP (learning can happen)
  
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  It's usually triggered by a releasing stimulus
  
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  Examples?
  
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    Squirrel nut cracking.
    
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    Human smiling and other human facial expressions.
    
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    Fear grimace in macaque monkeys in response to a photo of a menacing superior macaque's facial expression.
    
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    Vervet monkey alarm calls. Infants can make the calls (they're innate FAPs) but learning shapes when
    

they give the calls to the appropriate context.

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  Fear response to the visual cliff
  

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  There are other, non-FAP behaviors that ethologists study and make sense of, but FAPs provide a good example for understanding the later questions of ethology.
  

What is the adaptive value of the behavior? Why do they do it? What happens in its absence?

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  Sociobiologists framed in terms of reproductive success, of course. Ethologists are more about doing experiments in the field to literally see the adaptive value in nature.
  
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  ^{Example: FAP of gulls turning over egg shells, speckled side up.} They carry it out for speckled cardboard, etc. This provides camouflage from raptor predators and white side up makes them easier predatory targets.
  
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  Example: waggle dance of bees. A FAP in response to finding food. Useful in that it directs other bees to the food. But how do you know? Get in there and do ethological experiments! Rotate the hive so the directional information is opposite. Or switch where "the sun" is by having a bright light in a different direction.
  

What in the external world caused the behavior?

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  This is the realm of releasing stimuli (RS): the stimulus in the environment that triggers a FAP.
  
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  How do we know what the RS is? Example of the red dot on bird beaks (the RS) that baby birds peck (the FAP)
  

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