BIO153H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 51: Prairie Vole, Bird Vocalization, Greylag Goose
Document Summary
Humans have studied animal behavior for as long as we have lived on earth. As hunter and hunted, knowledge of animal behavior was essential to human behavior. The modern scientific discipline of behavioral ecology studies how behavior develops, evolves, and contributes to survival and reproductive success. Concept 51. 1 behavioral ecologists distinguish between proximate and ultimate causes of behavior. Behavioral traits are an important part of an animal"s. Many behaviors result from an animal"s muscular phenotype. activity, such as a predator chasing a prey. In some behaviors, muscular activity is less obvious, as in bird song. Some nonmuscular activities are also behaviors, as when an animal secretes a pheromone to attract a member of the opposite sex. Put simply, behavior is everything an animal does and how it does it. Proximate questions are mechanistic, concerned with the environmental stimuli that trigger a behavior, as well as the genetic, physiological, and anatomical mechanisms underlying a behavioral act.
