BIOL 1620 Lecture 3: Animal behavior
Document Summary
What an animal does and why it does it. To understand animal behavior, we want to understand both proximate and ultimate causation. For example, the killdeer that simulates a broken wing to de ect the predator away from its eggs. Ultimate causation: bird that also laid eggs on the ground. You understand both ultimate and proximate causation to understand the whole picture of animal behavior. After egg has hatched on the grass, the bird takes the shells and puts them in another distant place. Cleaning away the egg shells after the nestlings have hatched. These gulls, like many other birds, tend to be cannibalistic if nestlings are left unattended. Ew away to do their cleaning ritual, leaving the nestlings alone. Hypothesis: given the cost of cannibalism, have the bene t of de ecting predation because of the crows. Broken egg shows predators that nestlings are nearby.
