Animal Behavior PDF

# Animal Behavior ## 1) Ingestive Behavior The patterns of ingestive behavior are related to the anatomy and physiology of each species and the nature of its food. Ingestive behavior includes both solids and liquids and each species has its own particular methods, e.g. chickens and turkeys obtain...

# Animal Behavior ## 1) Ingestive Behavior The patterns of ingestive behavior are related to the anatomy and physiology of each species and the nature of its food. Ingestive behavior includes both solids and liquids and each species has its own particular methods, e.g. chickens and turkeys obtain their food by picking, but ducks with their broad bills are more likely to nibble or scoop their food. The pattern of grazing in cattle and sheep is correlated with the lack of upper incisors. Cattle wrap a mouthful of grass with their tongues, and then jerk the head forward so that the lower teeth cut the grass. Cows, sheep and goats spend a large amount of time eating at most hours of the day. Horse eats in still another fashion, they graze, but bite their food by both upper and lower teeth, chew it more thoroughly. The food habits of the domestic carnivores are quite different. Adult dogs and cats normally eat only once per day spend very little time in the process. Dogs especially rapid eaters, gulping their food in large mouthfuls, being most available, they are likely to eat large amount of it at one time. ## 2) Eliminative Behavior This pattern of behavior is closely related to the general ecology of the wild ancestral species. Dogs and cats, whose ancestors lived in lairs, show a specific patterns connected with elimination. Cats bury feces and urine, where dogs have a tendency to deposit them at particular spots known scent posts. ## 3) Sexual Behavior Each species has special sexual behavior pattern, and within the species there are qualitative differences between the two sexes in sexual motor patterns and in stimuli releasing these patterns. Mating between different species is difficult. Patterns of male sexual behavior include courtship, erection and intromission, ejaculatory thrust and dismounting. Patterns of female sexual behavior comprise period of excitability (estrus), mounted behavior (reception of male) and orgasm-like reaction after copulation. ## 4) Care-giving (Epimelatic, attentive, maternal) Behavior This kind of behavior is highly imported survival of the animal. In mammals, the care of the mother for its offspring is the most common type of this behavior; care-giving behavior is largely confined to females in our domestic animals and is usually described as maternal. All mammals allow their offspring to suckle. The minimum care of this type is provided by rabbits which visit their offspring only once per day and allow suckling for only a few minutes. In contrast, a mother dog or cat will spend almost 24 hours per day with her offspring during the first week. Besides nursing the common patterns of care involve nest building, as rabbits, brooding in chickens and cleaning or grooming in dogs and cats. ## 5) Care-soliciting Behavior (Et-epimelatic) Most young animals are unable to take complete care of them. They show a general pattern of behavior in the form of a call or signal for help. Young chickens have a loud, insistent chirp when distressed. Calves bawl, lambs bleat and puppies whine or yelp. The loudness of the call is always a clue to the ## 6) Agonistic Behavior ### Aggression A physical act or threat of action, by an individual, which causes pain or injury or reduces freedom in another individual. ### Agnostic Behavior Any behavior associated with threat, attack or defense. It includes features of behavior involving escape or passively as well as aggression. This includes fighting, flight, and other related reactions associated with conflict. Controlling undesirable fighting is an important practical problem in animal management Fighting associated with competition for males. In the bovine mammals, fighting is a regular part of social behavior, regulating the space between individuals and determining which males shall do the mating for the years. In the carnivorous dogs and cats, fighting behavior is closely related to the normal patterns of attack on prey. Cats keep the claws retracted in any but serious fights, and dogs used an inhibited bite in which the teeth are not firmly clamped together. ### Categories of aggression: * **Social aggression:** Occurs when animals live in groups. It serves to establish the peck order, that is, which will be dominant over whom, is the attack of an animal on another member of the same species. In this type of social grouping there is an alpha animal, which is seldom challenged by subordinates, a beta or second ranked animal which is only challenged by the alpha animal, and so on. This assertion of dominance in the absence of a physical combat is called ritualized aggression. Peck order: A stable hierarchy, in which each individual is able to threat, displace or attack individuals lower than itself with impunity. * **Territorial aggression:** Territorial aggression keeps others out of a particular geographical area. Castration reduces this form of aggression. * **Pain or fear-induced aggression:** An example of fear-induced aggression involves a cat with no previous history of behavioral problems that become markedly aggressive when admitted for treatment of abscess. * **Irritable aggression:** Irritable aggression develops when an animal is hungry, fatigued or sick and has less tolerate for disturbing situations. It is also seen in some old animals. * **Maternal aggression:** Maternal aggression is directly related to the protection of young. It can equal the ferocity of any male attack. * **Sexual aggression:** In some species such as the cat, mating behavior is accompanied by some very server biting by the male to restrain the female while the male achieves vaginal penetration. Sexual aggression also includes competition between animals for sexual partner. * **Predatory aggression:** It is different from all others, and some investigators do not consider it to be a form of aggression, it may be better called food-getting behavior rather than aggression. Predatory attack is the means by which some animals obtain food, thus it is obviously closely related to feeding behavior. * **Infanticide:** It refers to the killing of very young animals by adult. When female rodents kill pups, they usually kill their own, female infanticide appears to achieve at least two advantages, it decreases crowding and it helps attain an optimal litter size.