Psychology 3221F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Optimality Theory, Adaptationism, Shrew

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3221F/G
• Professor: Sherry

Document Summary

Ignores causal mechanisms (doesn"t talk about lipids, cabs, proteins ) just looks at animal decisions made while feeding and foraging. Optimality theory - tests ideas about function and adaptation. If we understand the decisions they make, can understand why they are acting the way they do. Moose: garry blofsky worked by the constraints he thought were effecting moose foraging behavior and use that to predict what the optimization criterion was. Knew that moose eat terrestrial and aquatic vegetation: aquatic have lower energy content than terrestrial, also new what the minimum daily energy requirements of the moose were (14000 kcal) Moose can only eat so much in one day. Rumen doesn"t fit any more than 32liters of food in a day. Aquatic food takes more volume than terrestrial in the rumin so the volumes of both can"t be more than 32 l. Daily minimum sodium requirement that it must meet every day.