Psychology 2700 Animal Behaviour

Psychology 2700 Animal Behaviour

Summer session I 2003

Monday and Wednesday 9:00 - 11:50 a.m.

Room: D 634

Instructor: Joanna Komorowska

How to reach me?

• Office: C 883• Office hours: Wed 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

(or by appointment)• Phone: 329-2436• E-mail: [email protected]

Exams

May 26 Midterm Exam I (33.3%)

Jun 09 Midterm Exam II (33.3%)

Jun 25 Final Exam (time TBA) (33.3%)

• Why study animal behaviour?– Pragmatic reasons– Protection of endangered species– As models of human behaviour– Curiosity

History of Studies of Animal Behaviour

• Scala Naturae (Aristotle)• Evolutionary Approach (J.Lamarck;

C.Darwin)• Ethology (K.Lorenz; N.Tinbergen)• Comparative Psychology (C.Morgan;

E.Thorndike; M.&H.Harlow; K.Lashley)• Sociobiology/Behavioural Ecology

(E.O.Wilson; W.D.Hamilton)

Scala Naturae(the great chain of beings)

Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) Engraving in 1821

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)wedding portrait done in 1841

Ethologists Comparative Psychologists

• Evolution, function

• Innate behaviour

• Many species

• Natural habitats

• Species differences

• Mechanisms, development

• Learned behavour

• Few species

• Laboratory

• General laws

Fixed Action Pattern- a programmed behaviour pattern triggered by a specific environmental stimulus

• It is innate or unlearned

• It is stereotyped

• It is difficult to disrupt

The egg retrieval response of the greylag goose

A gull attempting to incubate a super-egg instead of her own egg

Clever Hans - a horsewith a head for numbers

Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936)Photograph from ca. 1900

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 outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.”

(Morgan 1891, p. 53)

Thorndike’s puzzle box

Margaret and Harry Harlow

Mother-Infant Bonding

Karl Lashley attempted to locate the locus of learning in the cerebral corex

Sociobiology and Behavioural Ecology

Alarm call by a ground squirrel