Introduction to Animal Behaviour

1. Improve captive animal management

2. Improve animal welfare

3. Manage animal populations

The scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, usually focusing on behaviour under natural conditions,  and viewing behaviour as an evolutionary adaptive trait. 

Ecology addresses the full scale of life, from tiny bacteria to processes that span the entire planet.

1907 - 1988

Key Facts

• Dutch-born Ethologist and Zoologist
• Won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973
• Oxford University

Key Theories:

• importance of instinctive and learnt behaviours
• nature of human violence and aggression
• mating and courtship in sea gulls
• social behaviour
• 'motivational impulses'
• similarities between human and animal behaviour
• proximate and ultimate mechanisms

1947 - 

Key Facts

• American designer of livestock handling facilities
• Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University
• Ambassador for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Key Theories

• curved loading chutes
  • less stress for cattle
• centre-track restrainer
  • prevents botched attempts at slaughter

1934 - 

Key Facts

• British primatologist
• World's foremost expert on chimpanzees
• Began her research in 1960 in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania

Key Theories

• social learning, thinking, acting and culture in wild chimpanzees
• how chimpanzees differ from bonobos
• similarities between chimpanzee and human behaviour
• chimpanzee diet
• 'cooperative hunting' of red colobus monkeys

1903 - 1989

Key Facts

• Austrian zoologist, ethologist and ornithologist
• 1973 Novel Prize winner shared with Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch 
• Studied instinctive behaviour

Key Theories

• the fixed action pattern
• imprinting 
• releaser/sign stimulus

1809 - 1882

Key Facts

• Forerunner for evolution after his HMS Beagle voyage
• Ideas rejected, particularly by the church

Key Theories

• the theory of descent with modification
• the theory of modification through natural selection 
• PURPOSELESS
• PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM
• NO INHERENT PROGRESS

1849 - 1936

Key Facts

• Russian physiologist - studied at St Petersburg
• Researched digestive processes in dogs
• Nobel Prize in physiology in 1904

Key Theories

• conditionional reflexes 
  • conditional stimulus
    • conditional response

1874 - 1949

Key Facts

• Psychologist who studied learning theory - Work with B F Skinner
• Used puzzle box to study learning in cats

Key Theories

• 'law of effect'
  • responses to stimuli that result in a positive outcome are more likely to occur again