A dog’s bowing “let’s play” posture is a fixed action pattern. The dog lowers his front end and his rear remains elevated.
Egg retrieval behavior in geese is a fixed action pattern. A mother goose will retrieve any egg-sized object that rolls out of her nest. She will retrieve golf balls or cans along with her eggs.
Principles of Troubleshooting
A fixed action pattern is hardwired into the brain and runs like a computer program.
The fixed action pattern is turned on when it is released by a sign stimulus.
Hormones will activate sexual fixed action patterns in mature animals.
Other fixed action patterns, such as nursing or the play bow in dogs, are not influenced by hormonal cycles.
In some species people can easily imitate aspects of the fixed action patterns to exert dominance over an animal. Raising a stick over your head to imitate the raised antler display of an elk is an example.
Behavior with Mixed Motivations
Examples
Fear versus novelty seeking: Cattle approach a paper bag lying on the ground and jump back when the wind moves it.
Sex versus fear: A dog smells a female in estrus and keeps approaching the female even when another dominant dog chases him off repeatedly. Sex starts the approach behavior and fear of the dominant dog makes him retreat when he gets too close.
Fear versus instinctual maternal behavior: A young female dog is scared when she sees her first puppy but the fear disappears when the puppies begin nursing.
Fear versus aggression: A mother defending her newborn babies may alternate between aggression and fear.
Principles of Troubleshooting
In some cases, such as fear versus novelty and sex versus fear, the behavior may alternate between two or more conflicting motivators. In other cases, such as the new mother who initially fears her puppies but nurtures them once nursing has begun, the initial motivation is replaced by the competing motivation.
Mixed motivations are sometimes hard to decipher. Making a list of the observed behaviors may help.
Environmentally Caused Abnormal Behavior
Examples
Young puppies reared in barren kennels are more hyper and excitable compared to puppies raised with more social interaction with people.
A parrot who lacks social companionship pulls out its feathers.
Cribbing in horses (repetitively biting on a fence).
Bar biting by sows in stalls where there is no straw or dirt available for rooting and chewing.
Pacing in zoo animals kept in a small cage.
Dog licks excessively and causes a sore on its paw. Often due to separation anxiety.
Mice kept in barren wire cages will pace and circle. This most likely to occur when nobody is near them at night, because the activity of people around them attracts their attention. The abnormal behavior begins when there is little external stimulation from the environment.
Principles of Troubleshooting
It is important to prevent these behaviors from starting because they are difficult to stop after they are established. Abnormal behaviors are most likely to occur in barren cages that contain no materials to manipulate, or when animals are raised in isolation.
In barren environments, high-strung nervous animals are more likely to develop stereotypies—behaviors that the animal repeats over and over again—compared to calm, placid animals. Pacing, circling, bar biting, and cribbing are all examples of stereotypies.
An animal’s environmental needs depend on the species. Highly social animals such as dogs and horses need the companionship of other animals or people. Grazing animals such as horses and cattle need hay or grass. Burrowing animals such as rodents need materials to burrow and hide in. Animals who walk long distances such as polar bears and tigers need room to roam.
The nervous system of young animals reared in barren kennels or laboratory cages may be damaged because the growing nervous system needs varied sensory input to develop normally.
Some of the most abnormal behaviors that occur in barren environments are performed when the animal is undisturbed by people. When people enter the animals stop doing the abnormal behavior. Video cameras used for security systems are an inexpensive method for detecting abnormal behavior.
Genetically Caused Abnormal Behavior
Examples
A dog suddenly bites for no reason due to psychomotor epilepsy. This condition first appeared in springer spaniels who were bred to have hyper-alert posture. The bite will come out of the blue and is not related to a particular person or place.
A deaf, blue-eyed dog is hyper-excitable.
A hyper-excitable high-producing egg layer hen beats her feathers off by flapping her wings against her cage.
Roosters bred for large breasts sometimes kill hens during mating. They have lost their normal hardwired instinctual courtship behavior due to single trait breeding.
Goats who have epileptic seizures and faint when they hear a loud noise.
A hyper Dalmatian is difficult to train.
Nervous pointer dogs who get frozen in the pointing posture. If pushed, they will tip over.
Principles of Troubleshooting
Genetic defects are most likely to occur when animals are selected and bred for a single color, appearance, behavior, or productivity trait, such as rapid growth, blue eyes, a certain body shape, or a single behavior.
These problems can be avoided by selecting breeding stock that are free of behavioral or structural defects such as poor leg conformation that can lead to lameness. Look at the whole animal.
TRAINING METHODS
Reward-Motivated Training (No Punishment)
Examples
A dog fetches a newspaper and is rewarded with praise and petting.
A dog learns basic, sit, heel, and stay commands. Reward with praise, petting, and a few treats.
A drug-sniffing or rescue dog learns its task by receiving lots of praise and petting.
A dolphin is trained to jump through hoops using food rewards.
Animals are trained using food rewards to cooperate with veterinary procedures. Example: a dolphin presenting his tail to the vet for blood sampling.
A dressage horse is taught a complex movement using clicker training.
This form of training works well because a click sound that has been previously associated with food can be given within one second of the horse performing the desired movement.
A rat in a laboratory behavior experiment learns that when the light is flashing he can press a lever and obtain food.
Principles
Use no punishment. This means no stimuli that cause fear or pain.
All operant and classical conditioning methods that use rewards are in this category. There are many books available on operant conditioning.
Clicker or target training is effective for teaching new skills, tricks, or behaviors, especially in low-sociality animals where food is the best reinforcer.
Standard rewards: praise, stroking, food, or a stimulus such as a click that has been associated with a food reward.
Timing of the reward is critical so that the animal associates the reward with the desired behavior. Reward within one second after the desired behavior occurs.
Ignore behaviors you wish to eliminate.
You may also withdraw positive reinforcement to stop undesirable behavior. Withdrawing a reward is not the same thing as punishment.
For dogs, praise is often the only reward needed. Cats and many other animals will require either food rewards or a stimulus associated with food such as a click because they have lower levels of sociality.
Reward-motivated positive training methods are the best methods for teaching new skills, tricks, or behaviors. Trainers have personal preferences on training methods, but the important principle is to use positive reward-based methods.
Undesirable Behaviors That Occur Because a Person Has Inadvertently Rewarded Them and How to Correct Them
A dog begs
at the dinner table. Ignore the begging dog to stop the behavior.
A horse paws the feed bucket before feeding. Wait until the horse stops pawing and then feed him.
A horse pushes up against you. Instantly withhold treats or stroking until he stops pushing.
A young puppy mouths your hand. Withdraw stroking and/or play and move your hands out of reach the instant a tooth is felt.
Punishment-Motivated Training
Examples
A dog learns to stay in his yard after an electronic invisible fence has been installed. The animal learns that when he hears the tone coming from his collar he can avoid a shock by moving away from the boundary.
Cattle stay away from an electric fence.
A shock collar is used to stop a dog who is chasing cars, joggers, or deer. This is one of the few legitimate uses of a shock collar.
A rat in a behavior experiment learns to avoid a shock by pressing a bar when a light comes on.
Principles of Troubleshooting
Operant or classical conditioning in which a punishment such as a shock is used to stop an undesirable behavior. Example: a dog learns that he can avoid a shock by not chasing a jogger.
Behaviors with a strong instinctual motivation such as deer chasing are least likely to respond to positive methods and more likely to respond to punishment.
Beating an animal or other severe punishment to exert dominance over an animal is cruel and not very effective. Use obedience training or imitation of natural instinctual behavior to exert dominance.
Do not use punishment to teach new skills or tricks. Reward-based methods work better and are the most humane.
Notes
Chapter 1: My Story
1. Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).
2. You can see the cover online at http://www.goldbergcoins.net/catalogarchive/20010331/chap006.htm.
3. John J. Ratey, A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain (New York: Vintage Books, 2002); John J. Ratey and Catherine Johnson, Shadow Syndromes: The Mild Forms of Major Disorders That Sabotage Us (New York: Bantam, 1997).
4. O. I. Lovaas, “Behavioral Treatment and Normal Educational and Intellectual Functioning in Young Autistic Children,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 55 (1987): 3–9.
5. John Ross and Barbara McKinney, Dog Talk: Training Your Dog Through a Canine Point of View (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 71–72.
6. D. J. Simons and C. F. Chabris, “Gorillas In Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events,” Perception 28 (1999):1059–74.
7. Rita Carter’s book, Exploring Consciousness (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002) has a photo on page 17.
Chapter 2: How Animals Perceive the World
1. N. J. Minshew and G. Goldstein, “Autism as a Disorder of Complex Information Processing,” Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 4 (1998):129–36.
2. C. J. Murphy, K. Zadnik, and M. J. Mannis, “Myopia and Refractive Error in Dogs,” Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science 33 (1992): 2459–63.
3. Oliver W. Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
4. A Web site called “Pawsitive Training for Better Dogs” has some nice examples of color photographs as they would be seen by a dichromatic animal versus a trichromatic person. Dichromatic animals probably see a similar world to what people with color blindness see, but with much less saturated colors.
5. Arien Mack and Irvin Rock, Inattentional Blindness: An Overview(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998). They did almost all their research with vision, but they have preliminary findings showing that people have inattentional blindness for touch and hearing, too.
6. Minshew and Goldstein, “Autism as a Disorder.”
7. Paul D. MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990).
8. Elkhonon Goldberg, The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
9. Rupert Sheldrake, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000).
10. Katy Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants (New York: Penguin Books, 1999).
11. National Geographic News, July 8, 2002, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/07/0701_020702_elephantvibes.html.
12. Jianzhi Zhang and David M. Webb, “Evolutionary Deterioration of the Vomeronasal Pheromone Transduction Pathway in Catarrhine Primates,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100, no. 14 (July 8, 2003): 8337–41.
13. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (New York: Touchstone, 1998).
14. Mack and Rock, Inattentional Blindness, pp. 176–77.
Chapter 3: Animal Feelings
1. L. Zecca, D. Tampellini, M. Gerlach, P. Riederer, R. G. Fariello, and D. Sulzer, “Substantia Nigra Neuromelanin: Structure, Synthesis, and Molecular Behaviour,” Journal of Clinical Pathology: Molecular Pathology 54 (2001): 414–18.
2. D. Creel, “Inappropriate Use of Albino Animals as Models in Research,” Pharmacol Biochem Behav 12, no. 6 (1980): 969.
3. Facts about albino Dobermans: http://www.geocities.com/~amazondoc/albinism/textframe4.html.
4. Brian Kilcommons and Michael Capuzzo, Mutts: America’s Dog(New York: Warner Books, 1996), p. 13.
5. Pennisi, “Genetics: Genome Resources to Boost Canines’ Role in Gene Hunts,” Science 304 (2004): 1093–95.
6. Carlos Vila, Peter Savolainen, Jesus E. Maldonado, Isabel R. Amorim, John E. Rice, Rodney L. Honeycutt, Keith A. Crandall, Joakim Lundeberg, and Robert K. Wayne, “Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog,” Science 276, no. 13 (June 1997): 1687–89.
7. D. Goodwin, J. W. S. Bradshaw, and S. M. Wickens, “Paedomorphosis Affects Visual Signals of Domestic Dogs,” Animal Behaviour 53 (1997): 297–304.
8. Susan Milius, “The Social Lives of Snakes from Loner to Attentive Parent,” Science News (March 27, 2004): 201.
9. National Institutes of Mental Health, “Teenage Brain: A Work in Progress,” http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/teenbrain.cfm.
10. Robert M. Joseph, “Neuropsychological Frameworks for Understanding Autism,” International Review of Psychiatry 11 (July 8, 1999): 309–25.
11. Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 27–28.
12. Ibid., p. 144.
13. Ibid., p. 291.
14. Ibid., p. 149.
15. Dr. Panksepp writes SEEKING in capital letters.
16. R. A. Fox and J. R. Millam, “Unpredictable Environments and Neophobia in Orange-Winged Amazon Parrots (Amazona amazonica).” Animal Behavior Society meeting, July 19–23, 2003, Boise, ID.
17. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience, p. 161.
18. Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship (New York: Random House, 2002).
19. Pat A. Wakefield and Larry Carrara, A Moose for Jessica (New York: Puffin, 1992).
20. Paul H. Hemsworth and G. J. Coleman, Human Livestock Interactions: The Stockperson and the Productivity and Welfare of Intensively Farmed Animals (New York: C.A.B. International, 1998).
21. Z. Wang, L. J. Young, G. J. De Vries, and T. R. Insel, “Voles and Vasopressin: A Review of Molecular, Cellular, and Behavioral Studies of Pair Bonding and Paternal Behaviors,” Prog Brain Res. 119 (1998): 483–99.
22. J. T. Winslow and T. R. Insel, “Neuroendocrine Basis of Social Recognition,” Curr Opin Neurobiol 14, no. 2 (April 2004): 248–53.
23. John M. Stribley and C. Sue Carter, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. 1999 October 26; 96 (22): 12601–604, “Developmental Biology: Developmental Exposure to Vasopressin Increases Aggression in Adult Prairie Voles.”
> 24. J. Panksepp, R. Meeker, and N. J. Bean, “The Neurochemical Control of Crying,” Pharmacol Biochem Behav 12 (1980): 437–43.
25. J. Panksepp, P. Lensing, M. Leboyer, and M. P. Bouvard, “Naltrexone and Other Potential New Pharmacological Treatments of Autism,” Brain Dysfunction 4 (1991): 281–300.
26. J. Panksepp, N. J. Bean, P. Bishop, T. Vilberg, and T. L. Sahley, “Opioid Blockade and Social Comfort in Chicks,” Pharmacol Biochem Behav 13 (1980): 673–83.
27. J. A. Byers and C. B. Walker, “Refining the Motor Training Hypothesis for the Evolution of Play,” Am Nat 146 (1995): 25–40.
28. PBS has a nice Web site with a simple three-dimensional “tour of the brain” that shows most of the areas I mention in this book, although it doesn’t go into Paul MacLean’s triune brain theory. But you can look up areas like the hypothalamus or the cerebellum and get a good picture of where they are in the brain along with a short summary of what they do. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/3d/. Another excellent Web site that does cover the triune brain theory as well as all the parts of the brain I’ve mentioned in this book is run by an Oregon psychiatrist named Jim Phelps. http://www.psycheducation.org/emotion/triune%20brain.htm.
29. Rodolfo R. Llinas, I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002).
30. J. M. Faure and A. D. Mills, “Improving the Adaptability of Animals by Selection,” in Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals, ed. T. Grandin (San Diego: Academic Press, 1998), p. 235.
31. B. Knutson et al., “Selective Alteration of Personality and Social Behavior by Serotonergic Intervention,” Am J Psychiatry 155 (1998): 373–79.
32. I want to be sure to add that not everyone agrees that Springer rage is related to epilepsy, so down the line researchers may develop a new explanation.
33. Susan Milius, “Beast Buddies: Do Animals Have Friends?” Science News 164, no. 18 (November 1, 2003): 282.
Chapter 4: Animal Aggression
1. Jeffrey J. Sacks et al., “Special Report: Breeds of Dogs Involved in Fatal Human Attacks in the United States Between 1979 and 1998,” JAVMA 217, no. 6 (September 15, 2000).
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