Animal Behavior Lab

Title: Animal Behavior Lab

Abstract: In this lab, our task is to find the relationship between animal behavior and environment. We used pill bugs to test animal behavior. We put 10 pill bugs into two petri dishes with different environment, such as dry or wet, to find out what environment they prefer more. The pill bugs can move freely between the petri dishes, so we can conclude which environment the pill bugs prefer from the number of them in each dish. Our lab data shows that in the first setting, most pill bugs stayed in the wet petri dish. In the second setting, we started with 10 pill bugs in white dish and 0 in brown dish, after 5 minutes, 9 remained in white and 1 moved to brown.

Introduction:
1. Behavior is the range of actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with themselves or their environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the (inanimate) physical environment. It is the response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary. Although there is some disagreement as to how to precisely define behavior in a biological context, one common interpretation based on a meta-analysis of scientific literature states that "behavior is the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of whole living organisms (individuals or groups) to internal and/or external stimuli"
Behaviors can be either innate or learned.
Behavior can be regarded as any action of an organism that changes its relationship to its environment. Behavior provides outputs from the organism to the environment.
Hypothesis:
If we put the pill bugs into two joined petri dishes with different environment, the pill bugs that can move freely will choose the environment they prefer, thus demonstrating animal behavior. In the first setting, if we put the pill bugs into the dishes, they will move to the wet area because that area is what fits the most with their usual living environment. If we put the pill bugs into the second setting, they should stay at where they are or move freely without purpose, since pill bugs should be blind to colors.

Materials:
10 pill bugs
1 behavior chamber
4 pieces of filter paper (for all 3 parts)
Brushes for moving bugs
Timer/clock
5 ml water
white paper
brown paper


Procedure:
1. Find 10 pill bugs.
2. Place them and a small amount of bedding material in a small petri dish.
3. Observe the pill bugs for 10 minutes.
4. Make one petri dish wet while the other is dry.
5. Observe and record every 30 seconds where the pill bugs are moving.
6. Make one petri dish white and one brown.
7. Repeat step 5.

Result:

Conclusion:
In this lab, we put 10 pill bugs in two petri dishes with different environment. In the first set, the independent variable is wet or dry, the pill bugs moved to the dry dish. In the second set, the pill bugs stayed at where they were (white) rather than move to brown dish. The first set of experiment, we reject our hypothesis. The pill bugs didn't move to the wet area. In the second experiment, we fail to reject our hypothesis, the pill bugs didn't move toward a specific color; rather, they seem indifferent to the colors. So our conclusion is, the pill bugs are colorblind. However, we only did one set of experiment, so the experimental data is very unstable and not very reliable. In addition, the pill bugs seemed very uncomfortable and inactive in the petri dish, so we assumed that they did not accommodate to the new environment in the classroom.