Animal behaviour and humans Initially, animals were probably - - PDF document

25/02/2011 1 Animal Behaviour and human relations with other animals useful links:

http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/Ethology/introduction_and_history_of_anim.htm http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Animal_Behavior/History

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• Dr. T. Humle

Animal behaviour and humans

Initially, animals were probably

• bserved for practical reasons because

early human survival depended on knowledge of animal behaviour. Whether hunting wild game, keeping domesticated animals, or escaping an attacking predator, success required .

Prehistory

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Ancient Mythology & Beliefs

Natural History-Ancient Greece

Plato (428-348 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Natural History-Middle Ages

The Bestiaries

25/02/2011 3 Natural History-The Renaissance

René Descartes and science:

Unity of all sciences through deductive reasoning Never accept anything as true that is not known clearly to be such Divide problems into as many parts as possible, and proceed from the simplest to the hardest

(1596-1650)

Natural History- 17th to 19th Century

The father of British

• John Ray sweeps away

the litter of mythology and fable... and always insists upon accuracy of

• bservation and

description and the testing of every new discovery 1942:10)

John Ray (1627-1705)

The natural history approach of Darwin and his predecessors gradually evolved into the twin sciences of animal ecology, the study of the interactions between an animal and its environment, and the biological study of animal behaviour

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Natural History- 17th to 19th Century

25/02/2011 4 The Study of Animal Behaviour

Psychological & Physiological Questions

Behaviourism

Ecological & Evolutionary Questions

Ethology

Behaviourism

Studies of dogs by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov Classical conditioning

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

Behaviourism

Early Classical Conditioning with Humans-John B. Watson (1921)

J.B. Watson (1878-1958)

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Behaviourism

me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless

• f his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities,

vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years. [Behaviorism (1930), p. 82

Behaviourism

Pigeons and rats by American psychologist B.F. Skinner Studied of how accumulated experiences shape the behaviour of organisms Operant conditioning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

Behaviourism and the deductive approach

Testing hypotheses through experimentation on captive animals. Blank slate (tabula rasa) Argue for Nurture

John Locke (1632-1704)

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Ethology

Return to reaction against the tendency prevalent among psychologists to study just a few behavioural phenomena observed in a handful of species that were kept in impoverished laboratory environments.

Ethology

Interested in how instincts are triggered by various environmental stimuli- beh The study of the evolution and functional significance of behaviour- C.O. Whitman (1842-1910)

The Nobel Prize Winners 1973

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Ethology-Konrad Lorenz

Interested in critical developmental periods in young and evolution

• f aggression

Imprinting in geese

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U

IU9XH-mUI

Ethology-Niko Tinbergen

Fixed action patterns and super-stimuli ABCDE mnemonic A -- Animal B -- Behaviour C -- Causation D -- Development E -- Evolution F -- Function The four questions

Ethology-Niko Tinbergen

e.g. Why does a dog wag its tail?

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TYPE OF EXPLANATION QUESTION ANSWER PROXIMATE CAUSE

• 1a. Causation (physiological

mechanisms) Sensory cells detect a companion, and CNS sends impulses to motor neurons that activate tail muscles.

• 1b. Causation (cognitive

mechanisms) The dog recognizes companion and decides to wag its tail.

• 2. Development/Ontogeny

Tail-wagging is genetically programmed into the dog, but he learns which individuals are his companions. ULTIMATE CAUSE

• 3. Function

Tail wagging signals the friendly intentions to members of its social group, thereby maintaining the group and fostering the survival and reproduction.

• 4. Evolutionary History

In the past, tail wagging

• ccurred sporadically when

dogs interacted physically. Over time, tail wagging became modified into a

• Richard Dawkins

Marian Stamp Dawkins Desmond Morris Iain Douglas Hamilton Aubrey Manning

Ethology-Karl von Frisch

bees

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFDGPgXtK-U

(1886-1982)

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Ethology-Irenus Eibl-Eibesfelt

Applied ethological methods to study of human behaviour-Human Ethology Compared gestures and body language across cultures & identified numerous innate behaviour patterns in humans.

Ethology and the inductive approach

Observing and describe Why do these animals behave as they do? do the specific behaviours of these animals lead to differential reproduction Stress direct observation of a broad array of animal species in nature-The comparative perspective

Behaviourism vs. Ethology

Behaviourism Captivity/Lab Controlled Ethology Wild Naturalistic obs.

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The Descendants of Ethology

Behavioural Ecology Socio-biology Evolutionary Psychology Evolutionary and biological anthropology...

Ethnozoology

Study of the past and present interrelationships between human cultures and the animals in their environment. It broadly includes:

classification and naming of zoological forms cultural knowledge use of wild and domestic animals

Aristotle to the middle ages

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John Ray

History of plants (1686): "... no surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently;Ϳ

• ne species never springs from the seed of

another nor vice versa".

Carl Linnaeus (von Linné)

Systema Naturae

(1707-1778)

Linnaean Classification System

• 1. Kingdom - (most general)
• 2. Phylum
• 3. Class
• 4. Order
• 5. Family
• 6. Genus
• 7. Species - (most specific)

Binomial nomenclature

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Homo sapiens Pan troglodytes

Binomial nomenclature

Ethnozoology and classification

e.g. Henderson & Harrington (1914)

Classification & cultural knowledge

e.g. Roy Ellen (1993) The cultural relations of classification: an analysis of Nuaulu animal categories from central Seram. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

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Gordon Childe

(1951) hypothesis that domesticating plants and animals gave humans a revolutionary new control over their food sources.

Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957)

Domestication

• ca. 8,0005000 BC?

Enabled humans to switch from foraging, hunting, and gathering to agriculture and triggered a shift from a nomadic or migratory lifestyle to settled living patterns.

The animal connection

The animal connection is universal among humans, is capable of powerfully transforming behavior, and is absent or extremely rare among other species 2010:521)

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Charles Darwin Konrad Lorenz

The gray wolf (Canis lupus)

The Goyet Dog

32,000 years ago from Goyet Cave, Belgium Germonpre et al. (2008) Journal of Archaeological Science