Habituation - week 7

Back to instinctive responses for this week and a look at habituation. This is the process whereby an animal stops responding to a stimulus. 


Imagine if you responded to every stimulus around you - you would be exhausted! Habituation means animal stop responding to stimuli that are not biologically relevant. For example, a turtle will draw it's head into the shell when it is tapped on the head. After a while, when it realises that it isn't in danger, it stops withdrawing into the shell. Abused animals will often cower when humans are near them if they have had a bad history. After time, when they realise that their new owners pose no threat, they stop doing this. Habituation is one of the concerns with captive animals and releasing them into the wild. If they are no longer scared of humans, they don't run when poachers are near.


Your task this week is to research habituation and then design a study based around your research.

 Some things to include:

  • What species your study will look at and why (scientific studies often have to justify every choice made)
  • The method of your study
  • A risk assessment
  • An ethics consideration (how will you make your study ethical?)


Some potentially useful links:
http://ib.bioninja.com.au/options/option-a-neurobiology-and/a4-innate-and-learned-behav/habituation.html
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-habituation.html

Popular posts from this blog

Niko Tinbergen - week 3

Image
Nikolaas (Niko) Tinbergen was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared a Nobel Prize with Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch in 1973. He is also thought of as one of the founders of modern ethology.  The majority of Tinbergen's work focused on supernormal stimuli - an exaggerated version of a stimulus that a response is already known for. His two studies focused on eggs and stickleback fish. One of his first studies was also conducted on greylag geese. He found that mother geese would automatically scoop and roll back any egg that fell out of a nest less than 1m away. This retrieving movement with their neck would continue even if the egg was removed midway through the process. A movement like this that continues even without the original stimulus is called a fixed action pattern. However, as you can see in the below video - you can see that mother geese will gather anything that could be an egg! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PcteKRA3zs Your task is to look...
Read more

Konrad Lorenz - Week 2

Image
Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) is thought of as one of the founders of modern ethology. He shared the Nobel Prize in 1973 with Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch.  Lorenz studied instinctive behaviours - ' the inherent inclination of a  living   organism  towards a particular complex  behaviour .' Two of his chosen animals were greylag geese and jackdaws. It is his work on geese imprinting that we will look at this week. Birds that leave the nest early often 'imprint' on the first moving thing they see (think Fly away home). Lorenz didn't discover this phenomenon, but he did become known for describing this as an instinctive behaviour. This imprinting does not happen in human babies as they are born immobile and therefore do not need to form the attachment straight away. You are going to look at his work and discuss his findings, potential implications and the ethical considerations. Please do this by answering the following questions in the comments...
Read more