Bio 169: Animal Behavior

Lecture: The course will have 2 one-hour lectures, taught IN PERSON ONLY in Spring 2024 (2 hours total)
Lab: The course will have 1 three-hour lab, taught IN PERSON ONLY in Spring 2024 (3 hours total)

This course is an introduction to the incredible world of animal behavior, in other words, why animals do the things that they do.

Prerequisite: BIO 1 or permission of instructor
Scheduling: currently Spring 2025; next offered Spring 2026
Units: 3 units.

Syllabus: WordPerfect document PDF updated for Spring 2023 (updating coming soon)

Texts: Krebs, J.R., Davies, N. (2012) An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology. 4th Edition. Blackwell, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-4051-1416-5. Required

AND

Dawkins, R. (1989) The Selfish Gene. (Updated Edition) Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-286092-5. Required.

 

 

 

Field Trip (field trip 2025):

(This is now confirmed and unchangeable) We have a field trip to Ano Nuevo to see the Elephant Seals, on Sunday, February 9, 2025. This is a whole day trip and is required. It costs $11 per student. We will leave at 7:15am and get back around 7pm. Please plan your schedules accordingly. Yes, you have to go on this trip. If you do not go with us on Feb 9, you will have to go on your own and that will cost you close to $100 (gas, parking, park fee) if you can even get a reservation.

Term Paper

Handout, updated for Spring 2025 (update soon)

 

Behavior Project Ideas:

Critter Page: Here are some of the animals which we keep in the Department on a regular basis. Many of these make excellent subjects for behavioral experiments.

 

Topic	Handouts	Video Tutorial (these are large files and take awhile to load)	Sample Output
Basic Spreadsheet in Excel	wpd pdf	video tutorial	Excel spreadsheet
Graphing Using Excel	wpd pdf	video tutorial	Excel spreadsheet
testing	cr_test	cr_test

 

CSUS BIO SCI