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Behavioral sink. " Behavioral sink " is a term invented by ethologist John B. Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior that can result from overpopulation. The term and concept derive from a series of over-population experiments Calhoun conducted on Norway rats between 1958 and 1962. [ 1] In the experiments, Calhoun and his researchers ...
Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was initially thought to be caused by the subject's acceptance of their powerlessness, by way of their discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus, even when such alternatives are unambiguously ...
Animals must live in kin-groups during part of the game for the opportunity for this altruistic sacrifice ever to take place. Games must take into account inclusive fitness. Fitness function is the combined fitness of a group of related contestants – each weighted by the degree of relatedness – relative to the total genetic population.
Around 50–100 million vertebrate animals are used in experiments annually. Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and in vivo testing, is the use of non-human animals, such as model organisms, in experiments that seek to control the variables that affect the behavior or biological system under study.
In his famous experiment, a cat was placed in a series of puzzle boxes in order to study the law of effect in learning. [4] He plotted to learn curves which recorded the timing for each trial. Thorndike's key observation was that learning was promoted by positive results, which was later refined and extended by B. F. Skinner 's operant ...
An operant conditioning chamber (also known as a Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. The chamber can be used to study both operant conditioning and classical conditioning. [ 1][ 2]
Animals such as rats and mice display a natural aversion to brightly lit open areas. However, they also have a drive to explore a perceived threatening stimulus. Decreased levels of anxiety lead to increased exploratory behavior. Increased anxiety will result in less locomotion and a preference to stay close to the walls of the field (thigmotaxis).
Animal cognition. A crab-eating macaque using a stone tool to crack open a nut. Experiments like the string-pulling task performed here by a Carib grackle provide insights into animal cognition. Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition.