In this chapter, you will read about the difference between innate and learned behavior and the major types of learning. You will also read about how learned and innate behavior contribute to survival and natural selection.

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Chapter Outline

Section 34-1: Elements of Behavior
When an animal responds to a stimulus, body systems—including the sense organs, nervous system, and muscles—interact to produce the resultant behavior.
Innate behaviors appear in fully functional form the first time they are performed, even though the animal may have had no previous experience with the stimuli to which it responds.
The four major types of learning are habituation, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and insight learning.

Section 34-2: Patterns of Behavior
Many animals respond to periodic changes in the environment with daily or seasonal cycles of behavior.
To pass along its genes to the next generation, any animal that reproduces sexually needs to locate and mate with another member of its species at least once. Courtship behavior helps many animals identify healthy mates.
Usually, members of a society are related to one another. Related individuals share a large proportion of each other's genes. Therefore, helping a relative survive increases the chance that the genes an individual shares with that relative will be passed along to the next generation of offspring.
Animals may use visual, sound, touch, or chemical signals to communicate with one another.