 
 
 
 
Hi. It's Mr. Andersen and in
this podcast I'm going to talk about animal
behavior. If you study animal behavior you're
called an ethologist. And so that's ethology
which is the study of animal behavior. But
know this. When you study animal behavior
there's a wide continuum of behaviors. And
it's going to move all the way from innate
behaviors. So this turtle, sea turtle is born
and it's going to immediately head out to
sea. And so these are thing that you have
from day one. It's a continuum all the way
up to complex learned behavior, like this
chimpanzee. You can see he's thinking something
pretty profound I would imagine. And so let's
work our way from the innate all the way up
to the learned behavior. The first thing that
you should know is that an instinct is basically
anything that you have from day one. And so
if you ever take you're finger and put it
up next to a baby's hand, the baby will grab
on to that. Which you might think that's really
cute. But it you put it next to their foot,
they'll grab on to you as well with their
toes. And so this is a grasping reflex that
all babies have from day one. And so that's
genetically programmed into them. And you
can think about it just from an evolutionary
perspective. Babies who weren't able to hold
on mom, over evolutionary history, ended up
hitting the ground and not making it very
far. And so an example of this in the animal
kingdom, we could have the hognose snake.
So the hognose snake basically when you come
up and threaten it, it will spit at you and
try to intimidate you. But it doesn't have
poison. And so basically if you get too close
and mess with it too much, it'll turn upside
down. It's head will get thrown back. It's
tongue comes out and it starts to ooze like
the smell of dead decaying flesh. Okay. So
that's cool. But they have it from day one.
In other words, once a hognose snake is born,
the minute they hatch out of the egg, they
have this behavior. So it's clearly an instinct.
Next we have what are called fixed action
patterns. Fixed action patterns, it's basically
when you have a stimuli. It's a series of
actions you're going to take to completion.
And so it's easier to understand if I give
you an example. So this is a greylag goose.
Basically they'll sit on their eggs and incubate
their eggs. But if you ever take one of their
eggs out and put it next to the nest, they'll
basically take their beak and they're going
to pull that back into the nest. And so they
can sit on it. And you might think that's
a really smart goose. However, if you take
like a billiard ball, something that you play
pool with and put it next to their nest, they're
going to pull that in. Or a light bulb. They'll
pull that in and sit on it. And you might
think that's a stupid goose. But if you think
about it, through their history they never
really need to evolve a better way to discriminate
between eggs. And so that works well. And
they're probably wasn't back in the day a
scientist replacing all their eggs with light
bulbs. And so they didn't need to evolve any
kind of a better method. Now you might think,
we don't do that. Humans don't show fixed
action patterns. But you do. If somebody ever
sees you and you recognize somebody but you
weren't looking for them, you'll go like this
to them. So you'll be like, hey, how's it
going? And when you do that what you're doing
is you're lifting your head up, your eyebrows
are going to come up. And you do what's called
an eyebrow flash. And you don't even know
that you're doing it. But once you see somebody
do it to you, then you have to do it back
to them. Try this out. I do this on students
all the time. It's really fun. Next we have
what's called imprinting. Imprinting is basically
not learned behavior but it's going to be
something that happens during what's called
a critical period in your lifetime. And so
in geese, basically they'll imprint on their
mother. And they'll follow her around until
they become older. And so this guy, Konrad
Lorenz, basically realized that if he could
take the mother out and he could take her
place during this critical period of time,
then they would follow him. So no matter where
he would walk, they would just follow him
thinking that he's mom. Salmon will do the
same thing. So they imprint on the chemical
smell in creeks that they're in. And so as
they go out to the ocean and come back again
they can find it. But it has to occur during
this critical period of time. Next as we move
our way up is what's called associative learning.
You're probably familiar with Pavlov and Pavlov's
dogs. Basically what happens is you start
to associate two stimuli or one stimuli with
some effect. And so for example he would work
with dogs where he would ring the bell then
he would give them some meat powder. And then
he would measure, you can see he's measuring
dog spit right here. And so he'd basically
ring the bell, give them meat powder. Ring
the bell, give them meat powder. And so they
started to associate ringing the bell with
eating. And so pretty soon he could just ring
the bell and then they would start to salivate.
And so around here we have bears in the spring
that come out. And basically what they'll
do is raid all the bird feeders. And so they're
associating that food with that location.
And so years later they come back to that
same place. If you don't want them to do that,
you have to remove the stimuli. You have to
remove the bird feeder. Next we have what's
called trial and error learning. Trial and
error learning, the person who's most associate
with this is B.F. Skinner. And he developed
something called the Skinner box. So this
is kind of an example of that. You put a rat
in here. Maybe some lights and a little lever.
And so basically you can teach them. So let's
say when the green light comes on, the rat,
if he happens to just touch the lever, then
food comes out. And so basically you can teach
them really complex behavior using this trial
and error. It's kind of how we train dogs,
same way. One of my favorite stories of this
is, I think his name is Josh Klein, developed
what's called a crow vending machine. If you
just put crow vending machine into YouTube
you'll find it. What he did is he used trial
and error learning to basically build a vending
machine. He'd put quarters around it and then
teach the crows that if the put the quarters
inside a slot then food would come out. And
so basically you train them through a series
of steps and then let them go. And they fly
around town. Find coins. Bring them back.
And then he got the money and then they would
get the food. So we call this operate conditioning,
when you're teaching them to do that through
trial and error. Next as we move up is habituation.
Habituation is when you get the same stimuli
over and over and over again. And you eventually
learn to ignore it. And so this is a prairie
dog. And when a hawk comes by or a snake,
they'll basically make this scream. And so
all the other prairie dogs will head under
ground. And so what happens with humans is
if you go around prairie dogs they'll do the
same thing. But if you don't harm them, and
you keep going around prairie dogs, eventually
they'll habituate to that. And they'll ignore
it. And they won't make those calls. Likewise
if we have a sea anemone here and you put
shrimp for example on a sea anemone tentacle,
they'll eat it. And you put shrimp and they'll
eat it. But you put a chuck of plastic there,
they'll eat it. And you put plastic there
and they'll eat it. And you put plastic there
and then they'll just ignore it. So they're
not getting that food hit and so eventually
they'll habituate to the presence of that
plastic. And you can see evolutionarily why
this is important. You don't want to always
have the same response to every stimuli. Next
we move up to what's called observational
learning. Observational learning is watching
another organism. And you can see how we're
headed up that continuum towards learned behavior.
Observational learning is simply watching
another organism and mimicking that. And so
one of my favorite organisms is the octopus.
And basically when you put octopus in an aquarium
and you give them a problem, in this case
there's a bottle with a lid on the top. And
they have to open up that lid and then get
to the food inside it. About half the octopi
will be able to do that, half won't be able
to solve the problem. But if you put a octopi
in an adjacent tank it will watch this one
and it will learn how to do that. Right here
we have a researcher sticking his tongue out.
And then a little makak monkey is going to
stick his tongue out as well. And so a really
cool area of research is in what is called
mirror neurons. And so mirror neurons, it
sounds a lot like a motor neuron, but a motor
neuron allows me to do something like touch
myself right here on the head. But a mirror
neuron is different. And so if you watch me
take my finger and touch myself right there
on the head, watch me do that. As I do that,
a certain percentage in you of the neurons
that allow me to touch my head right here,
a certain number of those neurons, I remember
it being something like 10%, are also firing
in you. And so by you watching me, you're
actually learning how to do it by practicing
those neurons. And we find this in mammals.
And I think it's a pretty cool area of research.
And then the last thing I wanted to finish
with is insight. We tend not to see insight
lower down this continuum. But let me give
you an example. Let me give you a problem.
This is called the candle problem. And so
basically think of it this way. You're given
matches, tacks and a candle. And I want you
to stick the candle to a wall and then light
it. And so if I were to give you these objects
and put you in a room, you'll eventually try
a number of things. You might try to heat
the candle up on the side and stick it to
the wall. Trust me it won't work. You could
stick tacks in and try to balance it on there.
It's also not going to work. You could heat
the tacks. Still nothing. And so basically
you would eventually come up, using insight,
with something like this. Hopefully. And so
you would have to dump out the tacks and use
the tacks as a candle holder. And so it takes
awhile for you to solve this. And some organisms
would never be able to do that because they
don't have what's called insight. But chimpanzee's
do. If I were to put a chimpanzee in a room.
Put a banana up on the ceiling. Give a bunch
of boxes in here where the chimpanzee couldn't
reach. And just give him or her time, basically
he'd be able to solve this problem by stacking
the boxes up and getting the banana. And so
this is insight. And we don't tend to see
insight in really lower level organisms that
don't have highly developed brains. But crows
for example can solve really complex problems.
Chimps and primates can solve problems. Dolphins,
small tooth whales can solve that. And so
what we find as far as intelligence goes is
that you don't need to be intelligent until
you really start living socially. And once
you start living socially, you have to look
out for yourself. But you also have to look
out for everybody that's around you. And so
that's where we get high level intelligence
showing up. But we're just smart enough to
get by. And hopefully you're a little smarter
now. So I hope that's helpful.
