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Animal ability to process and respond to stimuli is correlated with brain size. Small-brain animals tend to show simple behaviors that are less dependent on learning than those of large-brained animals. Vertebrates, particularly mammals, have larger brains and complex behavior that changes with experience.
Tinbergen's four questions, named after 20th century biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, are complementary categories of explanations for animal behaviour. These are also commonly referred to as levels of analysis. [1] It suggests that an integrative understanding of behaviour must include ultimate (evolutionary) explanations, in particular:
The biosemiotic turn in Jakob von Uexküll's analysis occurs in his discussion of the animal's relationship with its environment. The umwelt is for him an environment-world which is, according to Agamben , "constituted by a more or less broad series of elements [called] 'carriers of significance' or 'marks' which are the only things that ...
Vision dominates our perception of the world around us. This is because visual spatial information is one of the most reliable sensory modalities. Visual stimuli are recorded directly onto the retina, and there are few, if any, external distortions that provide incorrect information to the brain about the true location of an object. [18]
Perception is not only the passive receipt of these signals, but it is also shaped by the recipient's learning, memory, expectation, and attention. [4] [5] Sensory input is a process that transforms this low-level information to higher-level information (e.g., extracts shapes for object recognition). [5]
Biological motion perception is the act of perceiving the fluid unique motion of a biological agent. The phenomenon was first documented by Swedish perceptual psychologist, Gunnar Johansson, in 1973. [1] There are many brain areas involved in this process, some similar to those used to perceive faces.
Comparative psychology is the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals [clarification needed], especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior.
Prior to movement, an animal's current sensory state is used to generate a motor command. To generate a motor command, first, the current sensory state is compared to the desired or target state. Then, the nervous system transforms the sensory coordinates into the motor system's coordinates, and the motor system generates the necessary commands ...