Psychology 2134A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Waggle Dance, Social Grooming, Animal Communication

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2134A/B
• Professor: Sarah Smits- Bandstra

Document Summary

Animals use various communication systems to aid survival and reproductive needs; these usually center around foraging for food, avoiding predators, recognizing friends, and finding a mate. Animal communication systems: have a limited range of meanings, consist of holophrases that refer to an entire situation, cannot combine elements to create novel ideas, can only refer to the current situation. The four fs food, foe, friend, and finding a mate. Communication any behaviour on the part of one organism intended to influence the emotions, thoughts, or behaviours of another organism. Communication is often vocal, but it can also take the form of facial expressions, body postures, movement, odors even flashing lights if you"re a firefly. Most of this communication is directed at a conspecific a member of the same species. But interspecies communication happens as well, and so does interspecies eavesdropping. Alarm call a vocalization to warn other members of the group about approaching predators.