Types of animal behavior

Understanding Animal Behaviour

Innate Behaviour

This behaviour is inbuilt and genetic, it appears in all individuals in a species.
This behaviour does not vary much between individuals and is not altered by learning.
Examples of innate behaviour include orienting behaviour (moving towards or away from a stimulus), fixed action patterns (unvarying, automatically performed sequences of actions such as yawning or flexing), and migratory behaviour (regular, long-distance change in location).

Learned Behaviour

Learned behaviour develops during an animal’s lifetime.
This behaviour is adapted and modified with experience and learning.
Examples include habituation, sensitisation, conditioning, and trial-and-error learning.
Habituation is the decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated exposure.
Sensitisation is the increase in response to a stimulus after repeated exposure.
Conditioning involves learning a predictable sequence of events, it can be classical (based on associations) or operant (based on reward or punishment).
Trial-and-error learning involves an animal learning an association between a behaviour and a reward or punishment.

Social Behaviour

Social behaviour refers to how animals interact with each other.
This includes behaviours such as communication, leadership, territoriality, aggression, courtship and parental care.
Communication can be visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, or chemical.
Leadership can often be seen in pack animals, where there is a hierarchy with a dominant alpha.
Courtship behaviour often involves elaborate displays to attract a mate, and may involve complex rituals.
Parental care refers to the behaviours of adult animals towards their offspring, this can be as simple as bearing offspring (in oviparous species), to feeding and guarding young (in many bird species), to teaching skills and developing social behaviours (as seen in many primate species).

Adaptations and Behaviours

An adaptation is any characteristic that increases fitness, which is defined as the ability to survive and reproduce.
Behaviour can also be viewed as an adaptive trait, one that has evolved because it increases survival and reproductive rate.
Behaviours that serve to increase an animal’s survival rate could include finding and choosing good quality food, avoiding predators and aggressive behaviour to maintain territorial control.
Behaviours that increase reproductive rate could include attracting and choosing good quality mates, caring for offspring, and in some species, social behaviours that help the group.
This area of study, known as behavioural ecology, is a combination of the study of animal behaviour and the study of adaptation and evolution.