ABSTRACT
Animals evolved to perform specific behaviors that help them survive and reproduce. This chapter discusses the field of animal behavior. It describes steps involved in studying behavior, including biologically relevant questions used by ethologists to explain and understand behavior. The chapter then discusses some behavioral concepts important to the care of animals in the laboratory. Normative or baseline observations often take place either in an animal’s home cage environment or in unmanipulated free-ranging populations. Laboratory animals are often studied in response to some challenge, either using a testing arena or in their home cage. There are a number of concepts derived from studying animals in nature that may have some application to laboratory animal care and welfare. Animals are distributed across space and time in various social or nonsocial configurations.
