This non-majors course will give you an opportunity to study the field of animal behavior. All of us often ask questions related to the behavior of animals around us. Pets are often a starting point, but birds and insects in particular tend to catch our eyes. Why do they behave the way they do? How did the behavior pattern evolve? How is the behavior pattern triggered? Is there any purpose to the behavior? Do we as humans have behavior patterns? Are there other social animals?      We will start to explore these questions by looking at some major themes of animal behavior this semester. This fascinating field explores how and why animal species behave the way they do. We are going to start out by exploring the “wiring” of organisms, i.e the effect of genes as well as the environment on the development of behavior.  Next we will study how the nervous system controls behavior (neurons and hormones are crucial). However, the bulk of the time will be spent on the major themes of behavior: avoiding predation, feeding, communicating, nesting, finding mates and reproducing, parenting as well as taking a closer look at social behavior. We will end the semester by examining behavior patterns of our own species. We will use numerous examples of behavior found in a large diversity of different animal species. The bulk of our examples in class will be drawn from insects, fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals.  As you complete the course it is my hope that you will have a good understanding of why animals behave the way they do and perhaps a better understanding of our own species.

Biology 36 Lecture Schedules/Syllabus - Svensson:

F 9:20am -12:30pm in SM34 Schedule Complete Syllabus

Course Information:
You will need Acrobat Reader to read some of the documents below.

• Course description of Biology 36 in the West Valley College catalog

• Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?

Page created by: Peter Svensson Updated: September 1,  2011