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AP®︎/College Biology
Course: AP®︎/College Biology > Unit 8
Lesson 1: Responses to the environmentAnimal behavior: foraging
Foraging, a crucial animal behavior, involves searching for food and balancing energy costs. Two primary strategies exist: solitary foraging, where animals hunt alone, and group foraging, where animals cooperate. While genetics play a significant role, animals also learn foraging techniques by observing and mimicking others in their group. Created by Brooke Miller.
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- so humans are part of the animal kingdom, the great apes, how do we forage similar to lions and antelope or differently??(3 votes)
- Back when Humans would hunt, it was considered most effective for us to engage in group foraging very much like a pack of wolves, in our case humans strategically hunted down their larger prey until exhaustion. Thanks to Anna's comment below, I now recall that a pride of Lions also engage in group foraging as well.(6 votes)
- what if a lioness has 1 cub tagging along with her while the lioness is looking for food, does that count as group foraging or not because the lion cub isn't helping the lioness hunt but the lioness is not alone she has the cub so which one is it? Group Foraging or Solitary Foraging?(4 votes)
- Are there any types of foraging other than in tigers?(3 votes)
- Birds are another excellent example of foraging.(3 votes)
- When a gazelle looks for grass in a herd does that count as group foraging?(3 votes)
- the tigers are eating prong horns and prong horns live in africa tigers live in asia so why is a tiger eating a pronghorn lions live in africa so it is most likely for a lion to eat a pronghorn not a tiger(1 vote)
- pronghorns actually live in north america and the tiger is not eating a pronghorn.(2 votes)
- Are there any other types of FORAGING?(2 votes)
- how do they know what to hunt?(1 vote)
- Well, I'm pretty sure that the young learn from their parents what to hunt and how to hunt.(3 votes)
- When humans hadn't evolved fully did we forage as well?(1 vote)
- Yes we did forage before the agriculture revolution, when humans started growing their own food.(1 vote)
- Can classical conditioning and operant conditioning occasionally overlap? In other words, do they intersect in any known instances? If a cow gets electrocuted after touching a fence, would this be operant or classical?(1 vote)
- classical conditioning pairs stimuli. Bell rings, food comes out. Learn to expect food when bell rings.
operant conditioning pairs behavior with response. Push button, get food. Learn to push button.
Which one is the cow and fence?(3 votes)
- I wonder if this could have anything to do with evolution?(0 votes)
Video transcript
- One of the most important
animal behaviors is foraging or the search for food within
an animal's environment because without this ability, the animal's not likely to be
able to survive and reproduce. But this behavior is an interesting one because there's kind of
a cost-benefit analysis that's associated with it. Obviously, an animal needs to
be able to do it to survive, but going out and getting food can actually take up a
lot of time and energy, so the animal needs to use
energy in order to gain it. And so the goal with foraging is always to figure out how to get
the highest energy yield while expending the least
amount of energy doing it. And the term foraging actually refers to a bunch of different behaviors. For example, it can
include looking for food, like this antelope right
here who's eating grass, but it can also include
things like stalking prey, which we can see in this picture with the tiger chasing antelope. There are two main foraging strategies that an animal can use, and it's actually what we see the tiger doing
in this picture right here, and that's solitary foraging. And actually, let me write that in orange to represent the tiger. So solitary foraging is
exactly what it sounds like. It's when an animal
looks for food by itself. The second type of foraging
we see is group foraging, and that's what lions do. And so I'll write that in yellow here. And this is when animals
look for food in groups. And one thing that's both good
and bad about this strategy is that in this case,
hunting would not only depend on your own behavior,
but also the behavior of those around you. And so this can actually lead
to competition within a group, especially when resources are scarce. But there can also be many
benefits to this strategy. When many animals are working together, it means that predators
can take down larger prey or difficult or more aggressive prey, so it can also be to the benefit
of everyone in that group. Aside from looking at just strategies, another question that
scientists typically have about foraging concerns
how animals figure out how to do it in the first place. And obviously, foraging behavior is probably driven strongly by genetics, but it turns out that
information about foraging can also be gained
through animal learning. For example, in some species
like many kind of primates, young members of a group learn to forage by watching the adults and
copying their behavior. In doing this, they learn
not only how to hunt but also what kinds of things
they should be hunting.