Animals meet their requirements for survival and wellbeing through maintenance behaviours. They include feeding, drinking, ventilation, making/finding shelter, regulating temperature and grooming. Behaviour patterns are usually adaptive, meaning that they benefit the individual organism such as how eating provides energy and being alert prevents being caught by predators. Maintenance behaviours include homeostatic behaviours- which assist in maintaining homeostatic equilibrium. Here are 5 of the common examples of maintenance behaviour:
Washing/grooming
Many animals groom themselves through cleaning the outside surface of their body- many cats lick themselves, birds preen feathers and monkeys often scratch and search for fleas. The releaser for birds to commence preening is ruffled feathers, which causes the response of hooking feathers together and spreading waterproofing oils over surface.
Home building
Some animals have to make their own homes
to survive and these can vary from the complex web of the orb-weaving spider, to the flashy nest of the bowerbird. It should be remembered that in some animals such as humans home building could be a learned behaviour- however in most other animals it is instinctive.
Feeding
Animals need to know where to find food, how to get it and how to eat it if they hope for any chance of survival. Structural characteristics such as long necks or sharp teeth can assist animals in obtaining and consuming food. Herbivores spend much of their day chewing due to the fibrous content of their meal and the slow digestion processes they must undergo. Carnivores on the contrary spend a long part of their day resting to conserve energy between hunting trips. An interesting example of feeding behaviour (mentioned in Innate Behaviour) is the response herring gull chicks have to a moving red dot. From birth, the releaser of a red dot on a moving object will cause the response of the baby bird to peck at the dot, which in turn causes mother to release food.
Maintenance AND HOMEOSTATIC BEHAVIOUR
"Bird feathers are made up of a central shaft with many side branches (barbs), each with tiny hooks. When ruffled, birds preen their feathers with their beak to re-interlock the barbs."
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