BIO 182 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Operant Conditioning, Habituation, Fixed Action Pattern
Document Summary
Ethology study of animal behavior: causation, development, adaptive function, evolutionary history. Benefit must outweigh cost in order for natural selection to favor a trait. Adaptive trait prerequisites: variation in trait, genetic basis, result in change in fitness. Innate: fixed action pattern (fap) instinctive sequence of actions that is always completed. Geese bring egg back to nest even if it"s not really their egg. Babies grab whatever is put in their hand: feature detection only pick up known signals (also learned) Humans only listen to languages they know. Frogs only pick up sound frequencies emitted by other frogs of the same specie: imprinting brand a certain organism as the parent . Geese follow around whatever animal they first see after birth. Often has a sensitive period in which the animal will choose who to imprint on: hormones. Female lizards are more likely to be prepared for reproduction when a male lizard who is producing hormones is with them.
