Animal Behavior Screencasts
Summary: Dr. David B. Miller, Professor of Psychology at The University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, U.S.A., is joined by Honors students enrolled in his Animal Behavior course for weekly discussions about course content and issues related to animal behavior and ethology.
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- Artist: David B. Miller
- Copyright: (c) 2017 David B. Miller
Podcasts:
How Empedocles and Xenophon made important contribution to evolutionary theory and predator avoidance, respectively; and, how those have influenced contemporary research, especially in the area of predator avoidance.
Observations of animal behavior date back to at least the cave art of Cro Magnons. Grotte Cauvet added new insights into a keen awareness of animal behavior, along with some of the early civilizations that worshipped animals.
Nobel Prize winner Niko Tinbergen is known for his four questions about which investigators might orient as they pursue their research on animal behavior: Causation, Function, Phylogeny, Ontogeny. Each is considered here, as well as one of many possible reorganizations of these questions.
Examples of how humans have exploited abilities of nonhuman organisms, for better or worse, including entertainment, earthquake prediction, warfare, and helping people in a variety of ways.
Ecologists are hugely invested in the study of animal behavior for a variety of reasons, such as imbalances of ecosystems due to introduced and/or invasive species, as well as conservation issues.
Scientists as well as hobbyists and enthusiasts from a variety of fields and interests have been interested in animal behavior. These include agricultural scientists, wildlife biologists, conservationists, and other scientists from a variety of disciplines.
An examination of how anecdotes and anthropomorphism influences the study of animal behavior, as well as the scientific approaches involving observation & description, experimentation, and using nonhuman organisms as models for humans.
Anthropocentrism refers to viewing the behavior of nonhuman organisms from a human perspective. In other words, we often deem animals as "clever" because they do things similarly to the way we do things. For better or worse, we tend to make value judgments about animal behavior based on our own behavioral capabilities.
Humans come into contact with nonhuman organisms in a variety of daily contexts. This episode describes some of this common situations.
A brief introduction describing what this screencast series is about.
Discussion about critical periods, development, weird animal news, and related topics. THIS IS THE LAST PODCAST OF THIS ACADEMIC YEAR. WE SHALL RETURN IN JANUARY 2014.
Discussion about development and other issues.
Discussion about animal communication.
Announcement of cancellation of this week's podcast due to Winter Storm Athena. We'll be back next week for a new Animal Behavior Podcast.
Discussion about sexual selection and various aspects of mating behavior in human and nonhuman organisms.
