1. Introduction to the study and definition of animal behaviour
- What is the study of animal behaviour?
- Tinbergen’s four questions
- The sensory and nervous system
2. Evolution, genes and natural selection
- Darwin and Wallace
- Genetics and DNA
- Natural selection in action
- Genes and behaviour
- Adaption
3. Foraging behaviour
- Types of foraging
- Camouflage and mimicry
- Trade-off and co-evolution
4. Measuring and analysing animal behaviour
- Steps involved in studying behaviour
- Observing and recording animal behaviour
- The risk of anthropomorphism
- Using video and online resources in behaviour research
- Finding and understanding scientific papers
5. Signals, communication and sexual selection
- Animal senses
- Signals and stimuli
- Animal communication
- Sexual selection and mate choice
- Mating systems and strategies
6. Kin selection, inclusive fitness and social behaviour
- Types of altruism
- Group-living and cooperative breeding
- The ants and their societies
7. Decision-making and evolutionary stable strategies
- Long- and short-term decision-making
- Motivation and the mechanisms of decision-making
- Evolutionary stable strategies and game theory
- Inter-individual conflict and the Hawk–Dove game
- Cooperation, the Prisoner’s Dilemma and tit-for-tat strategies
8. Artificial selection, domestic animals and animal welfare
- Domestication
- Applied ethology and animal welfare
- Getting information from animals on their welfare and suffering
- Pets and human–animal interactions
9. Learning and memory
- Habituation and sensitisation
- Associative learning – classical conditioning
- Associative learning – instrumental learning
- Social learning
- Higher forms of learning and animal teaching
- Memory and brain structures
10. Animal cognition and tool use
- Problem-solving, insight learning and intelligence
- Examples of problem-solving in invertebrates
- Examples of problem-solving in birds and mammals
- Tool use
- Self-awareness and theory of mind