The Development of Action Sequences

Revisiting the concept of behavior patterns in animal behavior with an example from food-caching sequences in Wolves (Canis lupus), Coyotes (Canis latrans), and Red Foxes (Vulpes vulpes)

“…Gadbois (2013) gives a short history of the zoosemiotic movement in ethology and how that influence opened the door to the study of the structure of complex behaviors in ethology. Fentress and Gadbois (2001) and Gadbois (2013) go further by adding prosody (we could label this fourth area "zooprosodics"), making the point that the musical expressiveness of a behavior is relevant and may hide some patterns otherwise undetectable (to continue the use of the linguistic or semiotic analogy: prosody).…”

“…The food caching example given by Lorenz was systematically investigated by the Fentress group at the Canadian Centre for Wolf Research and Dalhousie University in the early 90s (Phillips et al, 1990(Phillips et al, , 1991 with wolves and coyotes respectively, and with red foxes in the mid 90s (Fentress and Gadbois, 2001). We will take a new look at the work done with those three species by looking specifically at species differences in perseverations (repetitions) of elements of the caching sequence.…”

“…In other words, from deterministic behavior patterns (100% predictable), to random behavior sequences (0% predictability), there is a large realm of behaviors with significant variation (we called them stochastic, or having a probability of occurrence). The behavior or behaviors following the sign stimulus can be short, simple and very deterministic, or long, complex, or quasi random (at least in appearance, but we can argue this is rarely the case, Fentress and Gadbois, 2001).…”

“…See Fentress and Gadbois (2001) for an extensive review of the idea of syntactic and prosodic analysis of behavior.…”

“…In other words, reasonably well defined steps are needed to complete the sequence. Each step has its own purpose, and often, the sequence has a "logical" flow and pattern (in terms of the functional value of each element of the sequence): the order of events in the sequence is not random, but rather predictable (e.g., Fentress and Gadbois, 2001;Phillips et al, 1990Phillips et al, , 1991.…”