Login Get started

9. Ethology

Stanford・2 minutes read

Ethologists study animal behavior in natural settings, focusing on gene-environment interactions and fixed action patterns, contrasting with behaviorism's radical environmentalism. The research explores adaptive value, communication methods like echolocation and bat awareness, and cognitive abilities like self-awareness and theory of mind in animals, showcasing complex learning paradigms and behaviors across species.

Insights

Ethology, as a field, focuses on studying animal behavior in natural environments, contrasting with behaviorism's emphasis on controlled settings. Ethologists like Tinbergen, Lorenz, and Von Frisch highlighted the importance of gene-environment interactions and unique solutions to environmental challenges by various species.
Fixed action patterns, innate behaviors that animals exhibit without prior learning but can improve through experience, are a key concept in ethology. These patterns involve coordinated muscle movements with specific purposes, triggered by various stimuli, and can be observed across species, from newborn animals to humans, showcasing universal behaviors like smiling and nursing.
Ethologists delve into the adaptive value of behaviors like gull eggshell hiding and bee dancing, exploring how animals communicate and respond to stimuli through auditory, visual, olfactory, and tactile cues. The study of animal behaviors extends to cognitive ethology, examining the internal cognitive and emotional lives of animals, as seen in bat echolocation and self-awareness experiments with chimps and marmosets.

Get key ideas from YouTube videos. It’s free

Recent questions

What is behaviorism?
A: Behaviorism is a psychological approach that focuses on studying behavior as a response to environmental stimuli, emphasizing radical environmentalism and reinforcement theory.
Who are the founders of ethology?
A: The founders of ethology are Niko Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, and Hugo Von Frisch, who emphasized studying animal behavior in natural settings.
What are fixed action patterns?
A: Fixed action patterns are innate behaviors in animals that do not require learning but can be improved through experience, involving coordinated muscle movements with specific purposes.
How do ethologists study animal behavior?
A: Ethologists study animal behavior by examining the adaptive value of behaviors, stimuli triggering behaviors in sensory realms, and the role of learning in animal behavior.
What is cognitive ethology?
A: Cognitive ethology is a field that explores the internal cognitive and emotional lives of animals, focusing on understanding animal awareness and consciousness, as exemplified by Donald Griffin's discovery of bat echolocation.

Related videos

Summary

00:00

"Ethology vs Behaviorism: Studying Animal Behavior"

Next three lectures at Stanford University will cover TA overviews on nervous system and endocrinology.
Understanding genetics of behavior requires studying behavior in various environments.
Ethology, the field discussed, emphasizes studying behavior in natural environments and translating animal language.
Behaviorism, dominant in American psychology, focused on radical environmentalism and reinforcement theory.
Behaviorism believed in universality of behavior across all species and relied on controlled environments for study.
Ethology, emerging in Europe, focused on studying behavioral variety in natural environments.
Ethology's founders, Niko Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, and Hugo Von Frisch, emphasized studying behaviors in natural settings.
Ethologists had a diverse approach, contrasting with behaviorists' radical environmentalism.
Ethology focused on gene-environment interactions and unique solutions to environmental challenges by different species.
Ethology emphasized studying animal behavior in their natural habitats and understanding their communication in their language.

14:27

Enriched Environments and Fixed Action Patterns

In the 1960s, studies showed that enriched environments led to a thicker cortex, sparking numerous research projects.
The Head Start program emerged from the idea that enriched environments could counteract early-life deprivations.
A study on wild rats revealed that even without enrichment, their cortex was thicker than those in enriched laboratory settings.
Ethologists emphasized studying animals in their natural settings to understand behavior better.
Ethologists focused on fixed action patterns, which are innate behaviors that animals do not need to learn but can improve through experience.
Fixed action patterns are distinct from instincts and involve coordinated muscle movements with a specific purpose.
Ethologists studied what triggers fixed action patterns, the internal mechanisms involved, and the adaptive value of these behaviors.
Examples of fixed action patterns include newborn animals knowing how to perform certain behaviors immediately and improving with experience.
Ethologists demonstrated how animals react to stimuli without prior experience, such as a visual cliff response in various species.
Vervet monkeys exhibit fixed action patterns in response to predators, with different alarm calls for leopards, snakes, and eagles, shaped by experience.

28:44

Fixed Action Patterns: Innate Behaviors in Infants

Infants exhibit fixed action patterns like smiling, involving various muscles, even in the absence of prior experience.
Fetuses have been observed smiling, indicating the presence of fixed action patterns from early stages.
Blind babies also display smiling, showcasing that visual information is not necessary for this fixed action pattern.
Learning in fixed action patterns involves understanding who to smile at and recognizing social cues like mannequins not responding.
Nursing in infants is a fixed action pattern that prevents hunger, with efficiency increasing over time.
Cultural fixed action patterns include eyebrow raising as a greeting and universal recognition of emotions like anger, fear, and disgust.
Learning the social context is crucial in interpreting fixed action patterns like recognizing good or bad news.
Ethologists and evolutionary biologists explore the adaptive value of fixed action patterns, with ethologists conducting experiments to understand their significance.
Tinbergen's study on gulls flipping eggshell fragments revealed the adaptive value of hiding chicks from predators.
Von Frisch's research on bee dancing demonstrated how bees communicate food source information through specific movements, indicating the adaptive value of this behavior.

42:21

Animal Communication Through Various Sensory Stimuli

Auditory releasing stimuli, like rat chirping, can trigger a response in other rats to investigate.
Females' voices tend to rise during ovulation, and males can subliminally detect this change.
Visual releasing stimuli, such as in turkeys, can prompt specific behaviors in males.
Scientists conducted a study on turkeys using artificial female turkeys to understand visual cues that attract males.
Olfactory releasing stimuli, like pheromones, play a significant role in triggering sexual behaviors in various species.
A study involving sweat from terrified individuals showed that the amygdala activates in response to the scent.
Electric fish communicate through electricity, using territorial songs and specific frequencies.
Insects and arachnids communicate through vibrations, creating distinctive patterns for information exchange.
Elephants can communicate through vibrations in the ground using unique pressure transducer receptors in their feet.
Tactile stimulation, as seen in the surrogate mother monkey experiment, plays a crucial role in bonding beyond just providing calories.

56:21

Uncovering animal behavior mysteries through neuroethology

The question of why the inside of eggshells is white remains unanswered, with speculation about possible reasons such as calcium content.
A study on how human males can detect the sound of women's voices during ovulation involved manipulating voice pitch to gauge appeal.
Ethologists study animal behavior by examining adaptive value and stimuli triggering behaviors in sensory realms.
Neuroethology delves into understanding the brain mechanisms converting stimuli into behaviors, with a focus on birdsong neurobiology.
A reflex in female hamsters, the lordosis reflex, aids mating during ovulation, influenced by estrogen levels.
Neuroethology extends to human studies using brain scanning techniques to analyze brain responses to sensory information.
Field neuroethology involves studying animals in their natural habitats, like John Wingfield's research on bird migration physiology.
Ethologists explore the role of learning in animal behavior, revealing unexpected learning paradigms and maternal competence in primates.
Meerkats exhibit teaching techniques for hunting scorpions, showcasing classical learning in unlikely animal behaviors.
Animals making tools is another example of unexpected behavior requiring learning, challenging the notion of instinctual knowledge.

01:09:43

Chimps' Tool Use and Learning Behavior

Jane Goodall pioneered chimp research, discovering their ability to use tools to extract termites from mounds.
Chimps use tools to crack nuts, employing hammers and anvils.
Some chimp populations fashion large wooden tools as weapons.
Chimps learn tool-making faster through hands-on practice and observation.
Daughters of chimps learn tool use faster than sons due to attentiveness.
Larger social groups lead to earlier tool use learning in chimp offspring.
Chimps learn tool use behavior, unlike monkeys, through observation and practice.
One-trial learning, exemplified by Konrad Lorenz's duck imprinting, showcases rapid associations in animals.
Prepared learning, like the "sauce Bearnaise syndrome," demonstrates how certain associations are learned more readily than others.
Cognitive ethology delves into understanding the internal cognitive and emotional lives of animals, exemplified by Donald Griffin's discovery of bat echolocation.

01:23:16

Animal Awareness and Self-Recognition in Research

Donald Griffin discovered echolocation as part of his senior honors thesis at Harvard.
He published a book titled "On the Question of Animal Awareness" proposing the idea that animals have awareness.
Gordon Gallup pioneered the study of self-awareness in animals, conducting experiments with chimps and mirrors.
Chimps showed self-awareness by recognizing themselves in mirrors through specific behaviors like scratching.
Marmoset monkeys, unlike other primates, do not exhibit self-awareness due to their social behavior.
Marc Hauser, a marmoset researcher, demonstrated that marmosets lack self-awareness because they do not look at their reflections' eyes.
Theory of mind, the understanding that others have different information, is typically developed around age 4 or 5 in humans.
Chimps and birds have shown evidence of theory of mind through experiments involving food hiding and social interactions.
Animals, like chimps and dogs, can distinguish between intentional and unintentional behaviors by humans.
Corvid birds have demonstrated the ability to plan for the future by stashing food in different compartments on alternating days.

01:36:15

Chimps learn numbers through picture recognition experiment.

Chimpanzees can learn numerosity, or a sense of numbers having meaning, through an experiment where they are trained to recognize different trios of pictures and receive a food reward for correct identification.
When chimps are presented with sequences where objects are replaced with items from different sequences, they make more mistakes when the replacement matches the number in the sequence, indicating they partially file away information based on numerosity.
Chimps can recognize individual voices and react differently based on the number of novel male chimps' voices they hear compared to the number of males in their group, showing a sense of numerical understanding.
Evidence of transitive thinking has been observed not only in nonhuman primates but also in fish, where subordinate gestures are displayed in competitive situations, highlighting a different perspective on behavior and learning processes.

Try it yourself — It’s free.