Читать книгу Animal Behavior for Shelter Veterinarians and Staff - Группа авторов - Страница 83

Working with animals daily allows us a great advantage—getting to know their behavior. We get to know their likes, their dislikes, and how they tend to act in certain circumstances. Knowledge about an animal’s motivations to engage in or avoid certain behaviors and consequences that follow those behaviors gives us the opportunity to deeply understand the animal. The first step toward understanding animal behavior is understanding behavior in general. Behavior is anything an organism does as it interacts with its environment. From playing catch to reacting to human emotional states, animals exhibit a large variety of behavior, all of which can be analyzed.

It is apparent that each animal has a unique set of highly probable behaviors. Some dogs jump when someone new walks in, while others might hide. These differences are due to their individual experiences, also known as their learning history. Learning occurs when an animal’s behavior changes as a result of its experiences. Learning is much more than just the formal acquisition of a new behavior. As long as an animal is experiencing its environment, it is learning. Animals are learning all the time, meaning that their behavior is constantly changing, even if just a little bit. Knowing how easily and often behavior can change raises the question: How do animals learn? Answers to that question can help us effectively teach new behaviors or address behaviors that can be problematic.

Learning can be broken up into two categories: associative and non‐associative learning. Just like in its name, associative learning takes place when two or more events become associated with or related to each other. Events that can be paired may be two environmental stimuli, such as the sound of a can opener with the smell of food, or a behavior and a consequence, such as pawing a food bowl and the addition of more food. On the flip side, non‐associative learning does not involve a relationship between two events. This type of learning takes place with repeated exposure to a stimulus that occurs unrelated to any other stimulus. Depending upon the salience and timing of the stimulus, this exposure might cause the animal to pay less or more attention, exhibiting habituation and sensitization, respectively.