Almost all the behaviors of a housefly are innate. What are some ...

Question

Almost all the behaviors of a housefly are innate. What are some advantages and disadvantages to the fly of innate behaviors compared with behaviors that are mainly learned?

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone. Let's look at our next problem. It says blank is a series or pattern of actions that can be triggered by a certain stimulus and is unchanging. So this unchanging keys us in that we're talking about an innate rather than learned behavior as it doesn't change. Whereas learned behavior develops over time with experience and observation. And we're not talking about just a specific behavior. It's a series or pattern of actions that's triggered by a stimulus. So what we're looking for here is choice, a fixed action patterns. And as we can see by the name fixed action. Um These are a series of behaviors. They're very predictable. They're stereotyped that occur as a result of a stimulus and they always happen regardless of environmental factors. So an example of this, it is egg retrieval behavior in birds. Um The stimulus is the site of an egg outside of a nest. Um When I say a female goose sees this, she uses a series of very kind of predictable movements in a very specific way to roll the egg back in the nest. So stimulus egg out of the nest, fixed pattern of behavior, fixed series of actions that can be predicted. It's an innate behavior. It's not learned. Um Doesn't change over time to roll the egg back. So let's just walk through other answer choices to understand why they're not correct choice B is habituation and habituation is not what we want because it's something that is a behavior that changes over time in response to a factor in the environment. So in habituation this involves animals that are exposed to the same stimulus repeatedly and then the animal stops responding. So you know, maybe you've got a prairie dog and people's footsteps around its burrow so it might run back underground, could be safe. Well if people keep walking around and nothing bad happens to the prairie dog, it might stop running away when he hears footsteps. So that's what habituation is. But that's not, it changes its behavior when exposed to the same stimulus. So that's why it's not our answer. And it's not a fixed action pattern. Choice. E. Is imprinting while imprinting is an innate behavior that animals are born with. Um It evolves the attachment of a baby animal immediately after birth to the first sort of moving object or caretaker that an encounter. So that's kind of famously with birds when they hatch, they can imprint on something other than their parents. Obviously the benefit of this innate behavior is that it causes them to immediately follow their parents stay with their parents and become attached to it. But that innate behavior can be triggered by um or not triggered that any behavior can be transferred to other animals or even objects sometimes. So imprinting although it's innate and kind of a fixed behavior of attachment, it is affected by the environment because it can happen. It happens depending on what it is that the baby animal first sees um rather than always being uh the same stimulus, same response. So that's why it's not our correct answer. And finally, choice. The parental care was obviously the care that parents give their offspring. And this is not a fixed series of pattern of actions because there are different ways that animals care for their offspring. Um Some give a lot of care over time. Some give very little and it can be changed by experience. In some species, more experienced mothers do a better job of caring for their offspring. Um So it's definitely not a fixed response to a stimulus, So that's why it's not a correct answer. So again, choice, a fixed action patterns are a series or pattern of actions that can be triggered by a certain stimulus and is unchanging. See you in the next video.

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Almost all the behaviors of a housefly are innate. What are some advantages and disadvantages to the fly of innate behaviors compared with behaviors that are mainly learned?

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