PREVIEW of Course
Essential Animal Behavior

Modified: 2026-08-05 1:15 PM CDST

• We are all animals and we behave.
  • Explaining our behavior is an essential part of the scientific undertaking.
• In this preview we will look at some of the background required to become unbiased observers of animals behaving and at the how data derived from such observations is handled.
  • This long page will provide you the background necessary to understand comparative psychology.
• After this introduction, we will turn to physiological psychology before returning to comparative psychology at the end of the semester.

Essential Background

• Physiological Psychology
  • Mechanism for behavior and cognition
    • car:motor::body:muscle
    • cpu:computer::brain:body
  • Identity Problem
    • Math- 2 = 2 = II = "two"
    • Psychology- brain = behavior ?
      • If yes, then there is an identity
      • If no, then there is no identity
      • Answer?
        • If identity then studying physiology answers all questions
        • If not an identity then physiology only answers some questions
          • This last answer is more likely, so physiology only answers SOME questions
    • Continuity Problem
      • We are all animals
        • Relatively new concept (1859)
        • Older views saw humans as special, as different from "beasts"
          • Aristotle's Scala naturae
            • The Great Chain of Being, the traditional idea where God is at the top and the Beasts are at the bottom
              • This is not the current conception of life
              • From OZY Daily Dose (2020-08-17)

      "We, the people, are decidedly outnumbered. The score? Humans 7 billion to animals 20 quintillion, or thereabouts. Many animals we keep as pets, many we eat, many we try to avoid, but our relationship with animals has evolved considerably over the millennia — and is changing rapidly today. From fast-shifting American public opinion on animal personhood to the changing migration patterns of endangered leopards, animals are on the move."

      • How do we relate to other animals?
        • Complex question
        • Historically, humans have seen animals (and plants) as subjects (e.g., entities having few if any legal rights)
        • More recently, humans have become concerned with animal rights
        • In fact, some non-human primates have been granted legal rights (personhood)
          • PETA and other similar groups have campaigned for the ethical treatment of animals in many research settings
      • Evolution (click on this link and read, on the test)
        • Closely related to the continuity question
        • DNA is key
          • e.g., the near universality of the molecule in living things
        • Political issue, too
          • Many American profess disbelief in evolutionary theory
        • Much more on evolution later in this course
• Physiological Mechanisms
  • Food and Energy*
    • Food types
    • Feeding
    • Recognizing food
    • Hunting food
    • Domestication
      • Where humans feed domestic animals
  • Oxygen intake
  • Temperature regulation
  • Water balance
  • Motor movements*
  • Information*
    • Information is coded in many ways and in many parts of the brain
  • Neural integration* the features below transform neural activity into meaning
  • Hormonal integration*

* items we will study in this course

• All species most solve the physiological issues listed above. However, the solutions by each species may differ markedly. That is where comparative physiology enters the picture.
• e.g., sensory systems evolved to detect physical forces, however not all species evolved the ability to detect light or sound. Notice that we cannot endogenously detect the earth's magnetism
  • Quick, point to the north
  • How did you do that?
  • Can you feel the earth's magnetic field?
    • Some animals are able to do so (e.g., pigeons)
• Some History and Theory
  • Descartes
    • Philosopher, mathematician, soldier
      • cogito, ergo sum
      • Cartesian coordinates
    • Proposed dualistic solution to mind - body problem
      • interactionism-mind and body exist and affect each other
      • "If I cut off my foot..."
        • Descartes's thought experiment where he noted that if he cut off his foot he had only affected this body, not his mind. (The result would have been different had he cut off his head :-)
      • Set the stage for Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase Number 2 was an example of modernism (can you perceive it?)
        • See Wikipedia for more information, note how Duchamp was inspired by Eadweard Muybridge's photographic sequences
          • Public's reaction was universally negative
          • Duchamp tried to 3-D represent motion in two dimensions
        • Muybridge's horse in motion and other photos
    • Modernism
      • A reaction to classical and traditional thinking
      • Descartes's contribution was to allow people to conceive of mind and body separately (but see below)
      • Mind - body separation allows separate study of:
        • body - aka mechanism
        • mind - aka phenomenology
      • But, mechanism is more easily approached, so it is studied first, historically
        • Think of physics and chemistry
          • Mental issues do not enter their formulations: light nor reagent grade iron filings need be motivated
          • Psychology deals with both physical and mental issues must involve mechanism and phenomenology
          • So, in a sense, psychology needs to study things that physics and chemistry can safely ignore
      • Phenomenology is difficult (if not impossible in some cases) and lags, scientifically
        • Psychology began as the experimental study of the mind
          • Mind-internal, Body-external; Mind-private, Body-public
      • Solutions other than interactionism exist (FYI only, take History of Psychology in the spring to learn more :-)
        • Monistic Solutions (either mind or body)
          • materialism--only body is real (no mind)
          • idealism--only mind is real (no body)
        • Dualistic Solutions (both mind and body, in some fashion)
          • interactionism--Descartes solution, body and mind affect each other
            • Interactionism's problem is HOW do mind and body relate
            • Materialism dispenses with the problem by saying mind does not exist
          • epiphenomenalism--mind exists, but has no power, is created by body (brain)
          • double-aspectism--both exist, are inseperable, are like mirror-images
          • parallelism--both exist, do not affect each other, are on parallel tracks
          • occasionalism--both exist, but from time to time rules are broken (i.e., miracles)
          • pre-established harmony--both exist, do not interact, are like two clocks started at same time
      • Descartes and Psychology
        • Contemporary psychology studies both body and mind
        • Physiologists mostly believe in materialistic explanations (see p. 6)
        • Historically, psychology studied mind first, abandoned that effort and turned to body, finally decided to study both
          • Psychology's Movie Plot-"Psychology finds mind, psychology loses mind, psychology finds mind again."
  • Nature-Nurture Problem
    • What are the sources of behavior?
      • Biology (nature) aka nativism
      • Experience (nurture) aka empiricism
      • Seay and Gottfried view that dichotomy as simplistic
        • (Seay, B., & Gottfried, N. (1978). The development of behavior. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.)
        • They proposed 5 sets (or sources) of behavior:
          • Nature: behavior that universally species-specific and unlearned (e.g., reflexes)
          • Nurture: behavior that is acquired, learned
          • Ontogenic: behavior that emerges with physical development (e.g., walking)
          • Individual: variations in behavior (e.g., personality dimensions)
          • Cultural: behaviors imposed by the macro-environment (e.g., personal distance)
    • Thus, behavior comes from many sources
      • Those sources interact
      • It's very difficult to tease them out from each other
      • Identical twins reared apart are a kind of natural experiment
        • Rarely, identical twins are separated shortly after birth and raised in different homes
        • Researchers have found such sets of twins and studied them
      • Minnesota Twins Raised Apart Study
      • Genes and Child Development
        • Here is the text of that link:
        • Genes and Child Development
          Newsweek published an article featuring some of the latest research in developmental psychology. Interestingly, specific gene loci may be responsible for many of the behavioral differences seen in children.
          
          Temperament, for example, has a strong genetic link with associated behavioral consequences. Children with easy temperaments are less likely to pay attention to their parents and to listen to them. Fussy children, on the other hand, are more likely to pay close attention to their environment (including their parents) and are, thus, more likely to learn from experience.
          
          The article discusses genetic variations other than the mellow/fussy baby. The gene FADS2, for example, raises IQ scores for babies who have been breast fed. However, the "C" variant of the gene, possessed by about 10% of babies, does not lead to a similar rise in IQ scores. Another gene, MAOA, comes in "sluggish" and "active" forms. The sluggish version of that gene seemingly protects victims of abuse from later risky behavior because memories of the trauma are damped by that version of the gene. The active version, unfortunately, rekindles the traumatic memories and may lead the victim into alcohol or drug abuse as a coping mechanism. Another gene, DRD4, has been linked to a variety of behaviors including liberal political leanings.
          
          The implications this line of research are varied. For one thing, it multiplies the amount of individual variation previously suspected. For another, it causes researchers and practitioners to look more closely for genetic causes for behavior. Finally, it makes the entire behavioral picture much more complicated than previously thought.
      • In the future, psychologists will have to be more well versed in genetics
• Reductionism
  • Explaining complex processes by drilling down to simpler, underlying processes aka nothing-but-ism
  • The House of Science (Comte)
    • Sociology->Psychology->Biology->Biochemistry->Chemistry->Physics->Quantum Mechanics->?
    • Reduction is easily thought of and accomplished
  • What about the reverse direction? aka synthesis, aka constructionism
    • Given fundamental information, create higher level
    • Extremely difficult
      • "You have won a new car! Except, you need to assemble it." (I watched the old Truth or Consequences TV show where two teens won an automobile. Except, the new car was in pieces; they had a week to assemble it. They did.)
      • Alien spacecraft. You find the pieces for an alien spacecraft. Odds are you will not be able to re-assemble it correctly because you have never seen one assembled.
      • In other words, if you do not know the end product (the spacecraft here) because you have never seen one, then having all of its parts does you no good. The boys who won the car in pieces knew exactly what nearly every piece was, its function, and where to put it.
• Mind
  • Can we know everything?
    • Gödel demonstrated that we could not ( see Gödel's Theorem)
      • Basically, at any given level there are truths that are unprovable at that level. But, they are provable at a higher level. Unfortunately, at that higher level, there are also truths unprovable at that level, but, those are provable at a higher level, REPEAT
      • It is a infinite regress.
      • We cannot ever know everything
      • That likely includes the sad notion that we could never fully know the brain
  • Correlation does not imply causation
    • Physiological measurements (e.g., heartbeat, galvanic skin response, neural activity) do not imply physiological causation of specific behaviors
    • A correlation only shows the relationship between two or more variables
    • Experimental methods are required to demonstrate cause and effect
    • Thus, if physiological psychology it does not necessarily follow that finding two correlated events mean that one caused the other
  • History
    • Mind was the original focus of psychology
      • Voluntarism and Structuralism
        • Wundt and Titchener-search for "elements" of the mind
      • Functionalism
        • James, Hall, Dewey, Carr, Angell, and Cattell-search for the uses of the mind
      • Behaviorism
        • Watson and Skinner-Mind abandoned
      • Cognitivism
        • Post World War II computer models revitalized concept of mind in psychology
  • Animal Minds?
    • Do Animals Think?
    • Romanes and the origins of comparative psychology (see movie below)
  • Anthropomorphism
    • Attributing human characteristics to animals
    • Romanes did that and that was a mistake to assume that animals thought like humans
    • Later, C. Lloyd Morgan promoted his revamped law of parsimory, Morgan's Canon
      • ‘In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale’
  • Modern views of animal cognition
    • Crows and dogs recognizing people and cars
      • Text of that page (which I wrote, fyi)
      • I have a fondness for field research. John Marzluff of the University of Washington and his colleagues observed that the crows they had trapped previously in order to band them for identification seemed to be harder to catch later.
        
        So, they decided to test that hypothesis by conducting a field experiment. Three researchers, Marzluff and two students, then wore a caveman mask and trapped and released seven crows. Later, whenever one of the three wore the map on campus, the crows scolded them severely.
        
        However, whenever they walked on campus wearing another mask (a Dick Cheney mask), the crows ignored the wearers. This, of course, was the control condition.
        
        It seems, thus, that crows recognize people who catch and handle them and remember them later. Other researchers, too, have seen similar behaviors in crows and related birds.
        
        Informally, I have conducted similar exercises. I like to watch my dogs when I pull up in a rental car. Invariably, they bark at me viciously from behind the living room windows. They stop barking after I exit the rental car and start to walk toward the front door. Also, I have often sat outside in the afternoon while the dogs walk around in the front yard. I watch carefully for cars while I wait. I don't want to explain to my children why their dogs were run over. Interestingly, when I see my wife a block away and go to protect the dogs, they hear her van approaching and start to run in its direction (something they do not do for other vehicles).
        
        So, it seems that dogs and birds can recognize and remember things about us.
  • More recently, many people are developing personal relationships with individual crows. There is even a TicToc page about how to do so.
  • Lolly walking up sidewalk
  • My dog taught herself to use the smoother part of the sidewalk, an example of operant conditioning. The reinforcer being a smoother path for her feet. BTW, she always uses the smoother part of the sidewalk (see movie below)
  • Wittgenstein-"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." (Links to an article on Stephan Budiansky's book of same title on animal intelligence.
    • Related to human issues (e.g., men and women, cultural differences)
      • As hard as it is to imagine animal minds, it is also hard to understand human minds across genders
        • Adolescents who begin dating, for instance, must learn how the other gender thinks
          • Case in point (and a confession):
            • I took Linda B. to the 9th grade prom before I could drive
            • My father, I, and she sat in the front bench seat of our 1963 Ford
            • Linda was by the door, she let herself out, and walked to her house while my father and I remained seated
            • Later, I found out Linda was quite angry with me.
            • She expected me to walk her to the door!
              • LESSON LEARNED
                
• Animal Behavior
  • Ethology
    • European in origin
    • Its founders won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, Karl von Frisch)
    • Mostly studied behavior in natural habitats
    • Studied "lower" animals (there are no lower animals, really)
    • Taxonomy (see below) and comparative anatomy were precursors
      • Lorenz-ducks
        • Classified ducks using their courtship behaviors
      • Whitman-pigeons
        • Classified pigeons using their drinking behaviors
    • Instinctive behavior was main focus (see why?)
      • Because to use a behavior taxonomically it must be seen in all members of a species
      • Cannot be a learned behavior
    • Tinbergen's Four Questions
      • His: causation, ontogeny, evolution and survival value
      • Modern: mechanism, ontogeny, phylogeny and adaptive significance
        • In both cases the first two are proximate questions
        • The second two are evolutionary questions
    • von Frish (video)
      • Dance of the honeybee
      • Honeybees can communicate by dancing and chemical cues (and with only 250,000 neurons):
        • type of food source
        • distance (number of waggles)
        • direction (angle of dance relative to the sun)
        • In less common cases:
          • potential new nest site
        • Note: the dance is symbolic because it does not take place in the same plane (it's not like pointing)
  • Animal Psychology
    • American in origin (Thorndike, Yerkes, see Thorndike movie below)
    • Interestingly, both of those early psychology pioneers have been "cancelled" now because of their controversial views
    • Yerkes name removed
    • Thorndike name removed
  • Laboratory tradition
  • Studied "higher" animals (rats, pigeons, monkeys, and apes)
  • Study animals as models for human behavior (e.g., drug effects)
  • Learning was main focus
  • Conflict and Rapprochement
    • Early (post World War II) contacts were hostile (academically, that is)
      • Links to Dewsbury's history of comparative psychology, ethology, and animal behavior, and access to the pdf file appears to be free
    • Psychologists did not accept instinctive explanations for behavior
    • Ethologists were wary of laboratory-based experiments in learning
    • Over time, a synthesis of views occurred
    • The contemporary approach to animal behavior includes scientists from many disciplines
    • Donald Dewsbury on comparative psychology (abstract only, full article requires payment)
    • I reproduce the abstract and add bold:
      • Comparative psychology entails the search for general principles concerning the origins, control, and consequences of animal behavior. Interest in animal behavior can be traced from early cave paintings, to the ancient Greeks, and to later European philosophers, natural historians, and applied animal behaviorists before Darwin. The continuity of species suggested by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection led to important writings by such Britishers as George Romanes, John Lubbock, Douglas Spalding, and C. Lloyd Morgan. The field reached disciplinary maturity, along with much of the rest of psychology, between 1890 and World War I. Prominent programs were established at Harvard, Clark, Cornell, the University of Chicago, and elsewhere. The war and pressures on comparative psychologists to shift interests led to a period of inactivity lasting into the 1920s. Between the two world wars there was a revitalization of comparative psychology led by psychologists such as Robert Yerkes, Karl Lashley, Calvin Stone, Frank Beach, T. C. Schneirla, and Harry Harlow. This generation sustained a continued presence and educated a new generation that ensured the continuation of the field. Since World War II, the field has grown and been influenced by such movements as European ethology, sociobiology, and cognitive science.
• Evolution
  • The study of natural history
    • Origin of life: vertebrates
      • Part of our "family tree"
    • Sagan's Cosmic Calendar
      • Notice how over the 4.5 billion years of the planet's existence, humans have only lived on it a short time
  • Darwin
    • Loss of uniqueness
    • Natural selection
    • Longer time of earth's existence
  • Selection
    • Artificial
      • In domestic animals and plants
      • Aristotle--breed the best to the best
      • Humans are the agents of artificial selection
        • Breeds of animals (dogs and horses)
        • Domesticated plants (wheat, rice, and Cavendish bananas)
          • You may have noticed signs in Arkansas farm fields advertising the crop being grown on that field
    • Natural
      • When plants and animals reproduce without human interference
      • Types
        • Directional-adaptation leads to phenotypic changes over time in one direction
        • Stabilizing-adaptation leads to less phenotypic variation
        • Disruptive-adaptation leads to two or more very different phenotypes
          • Graphic
          • These graphics show before and after effects of natural selection with potential reasons why
    • 
    • Sexual
      • Mate choice decisions are part of sexual selection
      • Evolved body structures and behavioral displays are too
        • Examples
      • PNAS on Sexual Selection
      • Kardas (1978)
        • My dissertation involved studying sexual selection in the guppy
• Taxonomy
  • Defines taxonomy and its methods
  • Estimates that 1.78 million living things have been classified to date
  • Estimates that 5 to 30 million organisms still await discovery and classification
• Linnaeus
  • "King Phillip Came Over from Germany Sober"
    • Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, species
      • Humans: Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Primates, Hominidae, Homo, sapiens
• Taxonomic key
  • In this example with fishes, the taxonomic key is a series of questions that leads the taxonomist to properly classify them
  • Try it!
• Encyclopedia of Life
  • The EOL is an effort to put all taxonomic information about living things all in one place
• Genetics
  • Mendel
    • Austrian monk
    • Father of genetics
    • Worked out inheritance in English peas
  • Genes
    • Genes are DNA or RNA nucleotides that code for proteins
    • The collection of an individual's genes is called the genotype
    • The physical expression of those genes is called the phenotype
    • The modern synthesis of biology unites evolution with the study of genetics (see more below)
  • Modern Synthesis-genetics and evolution
  • Human Genome Project-example of "big science" with pure and applied results
    • Identified the 20,500 human genes
    • Determined the sequence of the 3 billion human DNA base pairs
    • Created databases to share this information
    • Addressed the legal and ethical issues surrounding genetic research and practice
  • OMIM-Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man
  • OMIM is one of the genetic databases mentioned above (its name is not very politically correct :-(
  • OMIM is "a continously update catalog of human genes, and genetic disorders and traits"
    • Victor McKusick biography
      • Author of Mendelian inheritance in man, he proposed mapping the human genome in 1969
      • In 2003, the Human Genome project succeeded in doing so
        • BTW, I heard McKusick speak while I was an undergraduate student at the University of Baltimore. I thought he was old then!

Key Points (adapted from text)

• Several disciplines study animal behavior. Comparative psychology is one of those. See p. 8 for the longer list of disciplines
• Many behaviors can be seen as adaptations. Experimentation, however, is necessary to make that connection
  • Recall that only experiments can determine cause and effect relationships in science
• Behaviors may occur in a variety of situation and may be more or less adaptive depending on the situation
  • For example, the human fight or flight response is often viewed as an adaptation to ancient hunter-gathering period of human existence.
  • In modern life that response may be maladaptive in the form of hypertension. (Because it's hard to leave your job and unwise to attack your boss!)
• Animal behavior can be studied as pure science or as applied science
  • The pure to applied continuum is prevalent in all of science
  • At the applied extreme scientists are trying to solve a particular problem (Like a vaccine for Covid-19)
  • At the pure extreme the search for knowledge motivates scientists and they do not think about applications (In other words, knowledge for its own sake.)
• Cephalopod Inking Behavior (not on test)
  • Inking is a behavior and an adaptation
  • The ink is at least a 160 million year old adaptation
  • How do we know?
    • Researchers examined fossil ink and it was identical to modern ink
• What is Behavior?
  • Live animals behave, dead animals do not
    • Thus, research on collected specimens does not give a full picture of the animal's behavior
  • Behaviors occur constantly even if they cannot be observed
    • Observations must be made at all times (e.g., day and night) to understand an animal's behavior
  • Voluntary vs. Involuntary
    • The breathing and sleeping responses of dolphins and other cetaceans (whales) is voluntary
    • Notice how dolphins and cetaceans can make half of their brain sleep while the other half is awake
      • In humans, breathing is involuntary
        • Humans cannot hold their breath indefinitely
  • External vs. Internal
    • Most psychologists will define behavior as an external, observable event
    • Physiologists, however, look for internal changes that could be related to behavior in some way
      • As noted above, though, it is very difficult to link physiology to behavior
      • Researchers (and students) must fight the tendency to leap to conclusions about such possible connections
        • BTW, this class will only give you the first few steps toward understanding physiology and behavior!
  • Two levels of analysis
    • Physiological-mostly in the laboratory
      • Traditionally, most physiological work takes place in a laboratory
    • Whole animal-mostly in the field, but much laboratory work too
      • Zoo rhinos have been taught via operant conditioning to stand still near the edges of their pens in order to be examined or receive medications
      • See Atlanta Zoo's Training Tales where they conditioned a pregnant rhino to submit to ultrasounds
        • Such methods combine laboratory and field techniques
  • Behaviors as Adaptations
    • Biological adaptations must have a genetic component (they must heritable): genes are involved
      • Conversely, cross-generational learning must be transmitted culturally: memes are involved
      • BTW, the original meaing of the word "meme" preceded its current use in the internet age
        • Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981)
          • They promoted the meme as an analog to the gene
          • Since then many researchers have expanded or contracted the defiition
          • Blackmore (2000) argues that there are many memes but that most fail to survive (e.g., be replicated)
          • Some memes persist (meaning they pass from person to person, much like a virus)
            • Note that genes must be passed sexually, at least in sexually reproducing species
          • A joke is an example of a meme if people tell it over and over
          • A sacred text is a meme because it has been reproduced for many years
          • In a way, you learning about monarch migration may be a meme if you remember it and pass the story on to others
          • More grandly, nearly all human learning is memetic. Here are some concepts that no longer are passed on:
            • phlogiston: an invisible, odorless gas required for burning
            • the four humors: the elevation of blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile as causative agents in health
              • But notice the words: sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and bilous are still used
            • phrenology: the 19th century theory that the brain's influence on behavior could be analyzed by feeling bumps on the skull
              • But notice that phrenologic images still appear online and in print
      • I wonder how many of our current memes will not stand the test of time
    • Tinbergen, egg-shell removal, and adaptation
      • He studied egg shell removal by gulls
      • Note how he moved from observation to experimentation
      • He observed that gulls removed egg shells from their nesting area after chicks hatched
      • He wondered if that was an adaptation
      • He experimented and found:
        • Egg shells attracted predators
        • Using models, color was found to play a role in removal
        • Broken eggs with a weight in them (equivalent to the weight of a chick) were not removed
      • This is a wonderful example of animal behavior experimentation outside of a lab (or, in the field)
  • Why Study (Animal) Behavior?
    • To understand ourselves
    • To improve animal welfare
      • In domestic animals
      • In zoos
      • In companion animals
      • In wild animals

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