Addressing Weird Animal Behaviors

This badge signifies the completion of the course Addressing Weird Animal Behaviors.

In this course we viewed several videos of behaviors some might describe as unusual. However, we discovered that behaviors that may be labeled weird or irrational by people are rational to the animal. To gain further understanding, we may first need to look at the phylogeny and ethology of the species to see what behaviors may naturally be in the repertoire. We then look at the reinforcement history (ontogeny) to see what conditions and consequences contributed to building the behavior. As we have been learning, nonlinear contingency analysis is essential to helping understand how behaviors are maintained, especially ones that may seem less straight forward. If change is desired, we can build new responses that can result in the same desired outcomes and consider increasing degrees of freedom so that animals have many ways to access critical reinforcers.

This course takes 1 hour to complete.