Rucete ✏ Campbell Biology In a Nutshell
Unit 7 ANIMAL FORM AND FUNCTION — Concept 51.2 Learning Establishes Specific Links Between Experience and Behavior
While some animal behaviors are innate and developmentally fixed, others are shaped by experience. Learning allows animals to adapt behavior to their environment, improving survival and reproductive success through mechanisms like imprinting, spatial awareness, and social observation.
1. Innate Behavior and Experience
- Innate behaviors: performed the same way by all individuals (e.g., spider web building)
- Learning: modifies behavior based on experience, influenced by both genetics and environment
- Cross-fostering studies: show social environment affects aggression and parenting in mice
- Twin studies: used to assess genetic vs. environmental influences in humans
2. Imprinting
- Occurs during a sensitive period early in life and leads to long-lasting responses
- Example: greylag geese imprint on the first moving object—even humans
- Used in conservation: whooping cranes imprinted with humans in costumes
- Failure to imprint can disrupt normal social and reproductive behaviors
3. Spatial Learning and Cognitive Maps
- Involves learning the spatial layout of the environment
- Tinbergen’s wasp experiment: wasps use landmarks to find nests
- Cognitive maps: internal models of spatial relationships (e.g., nutcracker birds storing seeds)
4. Associative Learning
- Linking one stimulus to another
- Example: blue jays avoid monarchs after getting sick from toxins
- Classical conditioning: associating an arbitrary stimulus with a reward (Pavlov’s dogs)
- Operant conditioning: learning based on rewards or punishments (Skinner’s box)
5. Cognition and Problem Solving
- Cognition: mental processes like reasoning, memory, and decision-making
- Honeybees can distinguish “same” vs. “different” in maze tasks
- Problem solving: e.g., chimps stacking boxes or ravens pulling strings to access food
6. Social Learning
- Learning by observing others
- Example: chimps learn nut cracking by copying elders
- Vervet monkeys refine alarm calls through group observation and feedback
7. Culture in Animal Behavior
- Culture: behavior passed through social learning or teaching
- Can influence fitness and be subject to natural selection
- Examples: tool use in chimps, regional bird dialects, crane migration traditions
In a Nutshell
Learning enables animals to adapt to their environment through imprinting, spatial memory, associative learning, cognition, and social learning. These behaviors, shaped by both genetic programming and experience, improve survival and can be passed culturally across generations—blurring the line between instinct and intelligence.