Ethology and Comparative Psychology

Chromosomes

23 pairs of these reside in the nucleus of human cells and act as carriers for genes and heredity.

Wolfgang Kohler

A Gestalt psychologist famous for experimenting with insight in problem solving. He asserted that by perceiving the whole of a situation, chips were able to create novel solutions to problems, rather than just solve problems by trial and error. He ran a series of experiments where chimps had to use tools (long sticks) or create props (stack boxes) to retrieve rewards. They could only do this with an a-ha! experience.

Karl von Frisch

A major figure in the study of animal behaviour. He is most famous for the discovery that honeybees communicate through a dance that they perform. He also studied the senses of fish.

Displacement Activities

AKA irrelevant behaviours. Refers to behaviours that seem out of place, and illogical, and have no particular survival function - like scratching your head when you are trying to decide something.

Sexual Selection

According to Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871), this is not necessarily the fittest, but those with the greatest chance of being chosen as a mate who win (i.e. best fighters, best courters, and most attractive individuals).

Genotype

All of the genetic material that an offspring receives, including both dominant and recessive genes.

Pheromones

Chemicals detected by the vomeronasal organ that act as messengers between animals. This is thought to be the most primitive form of communication between animals and can indicate fear or sexual receptiveness.

Other Types of Internal Clocks

Circannual, lunar, tidal.

Comparative Psychology

Closely related to ethology. Through research studies, different species are compared in order to learn about their similarities and differences. Psychology draws from animal studies to gain insight into human functioning.

Walter Cannon

Coined the term fight or flight, referring to the internal physiological changes that occur in an organism in response to a perceived threat that provide the animal with resource to fight or flee. He also proposed the idea of an internal homeostasis.

Harry Harlow: Social Isolation

Compared monkeys raised in isolation and those raised in peer groups. Isolated males did not display normal sexual functioning and isolated females lacked maternal behaviours.

Edward Thorndike

Concept of instrumental learning - trial, error, accidental success. Demonstrated the concept with cats in puzzle boxes - the accidental success teaches them eventually to press the escape door lever - also reinforcing his law of effect.

Selective Breeding

Contrived breeding - mates are intentionally paired to increase the chances of producing offspring with particular traits.

Harry Harlow: Learning to Learn

Demostrated that monkeys became better at learning tasks as they acquired different learning experiences. Eventually, monkeys could learn after only one trial. He called this "learning to learn".

Circadian Rhythms

Endogenous rhythms that revolve around a 24-hour time period.

Tinbergen's Stickleback Fish Experiment

In the spring the male fish develop red coloration on their belly and fight each other. Tinbergen hypothesized that the red belly acted as the releasing stimulus. To test this, he built crappy fish models with red tummies and detailed fish models without red tummies. They attacked the red tummy fishes, supporting his hypothesis.

Fixed Action Patterns

Instinctual, complex chains of behaviours triggered by releasing stimuli. They have four defining characteristics: uniform patterns, performed by most members of the species, are more complex than simple reflexes, and they cannot be interrupted or stopped in the middle.

Biological Clocks

Internal rhythms that keep an animal in sync with the environment.

Instinctual/ Innate Behaviours

Present in all normal members of a species, stereotypic in form throughout the members of a species (even when performed for the first time), and independent of learning or experience.

"Maze Bright" and "Maze Dull" Rat Experiments

R. C. Tyron bred these rats to show heritability. Later R. M. Cooper and John Zubek demonstrated the interaction between heredity and environment by using enriched (all the rats did well) and impoverished (all the rats sucked) environments. Only in normal environments did maze bright vs maze dull make a difference.

Courting

Refers to behaviours that precede sexual acts that lead to reproduction. Serves the purposes of attracting a mate and of isolating a mate of the same species.

Harry Harlow

Researched development with rhesus monkeys. Of particular significance to developmental psychology were his results with social isolation and maternal stimulation.

Genes

The basic unit or heredity. Composed of DNA molecules and organized in chromosomes.

Interaction Between Instinct and Learning

Rodents reared in isolation still perform instinctual nest-building behaviours, but they are less efficient and less successful than rodents exposed to learning opportunities.

Reproductive Isolating Mechanisms

Serve to prevent interbreeding between two different, but similar species. There are four types: behavioural, geographic, mechanical, and isolation by season.

Sensitive/ Critical Periods and Imprinting

Some animals will attempt to mate with the type of animal that they imprinted on, no matter their later experiences.

Gametes

Sperm or ovum, in humans - they are haploid and contain 23 single chromosomes, unlike all the other human cells that are diploid and contain 23 pairs. Even zygotes are diploid.

Harry Harlow: Contact Comfort

Studied the phenomenon of attachment with infant monkeys. Infant approached wire mom only to feed, and hung out with the cloth mom the rest of the time.

Eric Kandel

Studied the sea slug Aplysia, which he chose because of its few, large, easily identifiable nerve cells. He posited that learning and memory are evidenced by changes in synapses and neural pathways.

Karl von Frisch: Honeybee Mating

Very few male bees (drones) are produced. They serve only one purpose - to mate with the queen. The same mating areas are used year after year, even though no bee survives from one year to the next - no one knows how they know.

Instinctual Drift

When an animal replaces a trained or forced response with a natural or instinctive response.

Behavioural Isolation

When courtship or display behaviour of a particular species allows an individual to identify a mate within its own species - only a member of that species will respond to that particular type of courting.

Geographic Isolation

When different species breed in different areas to prevent confusion or genetic mixing.

Mechanical Isolation

When different species have incompatible genital structures.

Isolation by Season

When potentially compatible species mate during different seasons.

Nobel Prize of 1973

Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch.

Owl Navigation

Like bats, they navigate at night, but they do not use echolocation. Instead, they hear similar to humans, but their ears are asymmetrical (one higher than the other), allowing them to determine elevation better.

Releasing Stimuli

Lorenz did the earliest work with releasing stimuli (AKA releasers or sign stimuli), which was later continued by Tinbergen. A releasing stimulus in one individual of a species elicits an automatic, instinctual chain of behaviours from another individual in the same species. He called these elicited chains of behaviours fixed action patterns.

Animal Aggression

Lorenz's theory of instinct fueled the fire of ethology's great debate over innate behaviour. Most notably, drawing from Darwin's ideas of natural selection. He argued that certain kinds of aggression were necessary for the survival of species. Contrary to most psychologists, he argued that aggressive behaviour is instinctual rather than learned, and that even human intraspecies aggression can be explained through survival needs.

Charles Darwin

Made the concept of evolution scientifically plausible by asserting that natural selection was at its core, although he was not the first person to think of the theory.

Nikolaas Tinbergen

One of the founders of modern ethology. Best known for his use of models in naturalistic settings. Continued work with releasing stimuli. Most famous experiments involved stickleback fish and herring gull chicks.

Karl von Frisch: Honeybee Hierarchy

Only one bee emerges as the queen and then she produces a chemical that suppresses the ovaries in all of the other female bees, so that she is the only reproducer. The queen is tended to and fed by the other bees and she lays thousands of eggs. As the eggs mature the scouts find a new hive site for the old queen and her crew, so the new queen can take her place.

Mimicry

An evolved form of deception. Some harmless species of snakes mimic colouring and patterns of poisonous snakes to avoid predation.

Supernormal Sign Stimuli

Artificial stimuli that exaggerate the naturally occurring sign stimulus or releaser. They are more effective than the natural releaser.

7 Cues for Navigation

Atmospheric pressure, infrasound, magnetic sense, sun compass, star compass, polarized light, and echolocation.

Cross-Fostering Experiments

Attempts to separate effects of heredity and environment by putting sibling mice with different parents or in different situations.

Karl von Frisch: Honeybee Flower Selection

Bees can see ultraviolet light, so they see flower colouration in a more complex way than humans do. He found that honeybees could see certain markers on flowers (honeyguides) that people could not.

Karl von Frisch: Honeybee Navigation

Bees use landmarks as simple cues, but they can also use the sun, polarized light, and magnetic fields as navigational aids.

Altruism

Behaviour that solely benefits another. True altruism would screw up natural selection, so ethologists assume that altruistic behaviours are done out of a group mentality.

Inbreeding

Breeding within the same families. Evolutionary controls prevent this. For instance, swans in the same family have similar face markings, so swans mate with other swans that have dissimilar markings.

Navigation

Certain animals seem to be adept navigators. Some use a map-and-compass style using landmarks, as well as the sun and stars. Others have true navigational abilities in which they can point toward their goal with no landmarks, and from any position. Birds and bees are commonly cited as celestial navigators.

Karl von Frisch: Honeybee Communication

Honeybees communicate through dancing - if a scouting bee finds food they come back and dances: a round dance indicates food that is extremely nearby and a waggle dance indicates the food is far away. The longer the dance, the farther the food - the more vigorous the display, the better the food. The dance is performed on the vertical sheets of the hive - the angle between a perfectly vertical line and the direction of the bee is the angle between the sun and food sources. The same dance is used to communicate nesting sites.

Genetic Drift

How particular genotypes are selected out or eliminated from a population over time.

Tinbergen's Herring Gull Chick Experiment

Hungry chicks peck at the end of their parents' bills, which have a red spot on the tip, and then the parent regurgitates food for the chicks. He found chicks pecked more at a red-tipped model, and even more the greater the contrast. This began the concept of the supernormal sign stimulus.

Phenotype

The external genetic characteristics - what a person looks like. Genes pair into alleles and dominant genes beat recessive genes when they are paired.

Konrad Lorenz

The founder of ethology as a distinct research area. He created well-known terminology and theory. He is best known for work with: imprinting, animal aggression, releasing stimuli, and fixed action patterns.

Estrus

The period in which a female of the species is sexually receptive (usually used to describe non-human mammals).

Sexual Dimorphism

The structural differences between the sexes. Has arisen through both natural and sexual selections.

Ethology

The study of animal behaviours, especially innate behaviours that occur in a natural habitat.

Inclusive Fitness

This principle suggests that animals are invested not just in their own survival, but also their kin (since they are carrying the same genes). This is called kin selection.

Imprinting

Through extensive work with animal social relationships, Lorenz discovered that in certain species (most often birds) the young attach or imprint on the first moving object they see after birth. This attachment is most commonly displayed by a "following response". He also found that imprinting was subject to a sensitive learning period, after which imprinting would not occur.