Why do praying mantises display a unique mating system, called sexual
cannibalism, where a member of a male-female pair kills and consumes the
other during courtship or copulation? At the end of every summer, why
do more than 100 million monarch butterflies sweep across North America
to overwinter further south in California and Mexico? Animal behavior is
the study of these and other questions about why animals behave the way
they do.
The study of animal behavior begins with understanding
how an animal’s physiology and anatomy are integrated with its
behavior. Both external and internal stimuli prompt behaviors — external
information (e.g., threats from other animals, sounds, smells) or
weather and internal information (e.g., hunger, fear). Understanding how
genes and the environment come together to shape animal behavior is
also an important underpinning of the field. Genes capture the
evolutionary responses of prior populations to selection on behavior.
Environmental flexibility gives animals the opportunity to adjust to
changes during their own lifetime.
Scientists are drawn to the
study of animal behavior for varied reasons and the field is extremely
broad, ranging from research on feeding behavior and habitat selection
to mating behavior and social organizations. Many scientists study
animal behavior because it sheds light on human beings. Research on
non-human primates, for instance, continues to offer valuable
perspectives into the causes and evolution of individual, social, and
reproductive human actions. Understanding why some animals help others
at the potential cost of their own survival and reproduction, for
example, not only gives us insight into their behavior but could also
potentially help us to understand the underpinnings of our species'
ideas of altruism and sacrifice.
