Prey Module 1

Scouting for deer

Whether you associate deer with Bambi, venison, or the roses eaten from your garden, most of us enjoy finding places where we can watch deer. Then we are surprised when they do not behave the way we expect them to act! In this activity, you will be guided through the inquiry process of "learning to think like a scientist" so you can open your mind to how deer think like deer. In this process, we will be focusing on some of the basic building blocks of inquiry: objective observation, form vs. function, and critical thinking skills.

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish between observation, inference, and questions that arise from freestyle (ad libitum) notes about deer communication (sender/receiver).
• Use video technology to record the body language of deer for further detailed analysis.
• Practice critical thinking in distinguishing between reliable (scientific) and unreliable sources of information about deer communication behavior.

Background:

Recently, scientists are examining in more depth the type of information that is conveyed in the mating call of elk and red deer. We invite you to explore some of the links that look interesting to you on this list of background information, so you are aware of the available information that otherwise might be hard to find. Also, read over the following tips on preparing an ethogram, which is analogous to a dictionary of all the actions of a species.

• Background Information for Students: [online] [printable pdf]
• Ethogram Action Worksheet: tips for describing each behavior [printable pdf]
• Partial Ethogram | excel | pdf

To prepare you for the activities that follow, brush up on your understanding of the evolutionary history of deer. It will help you learn how to interpret the body language that you observe.

• Why have deer species diverged? [powerpoint] [printable pdf]

If you are feeling a bit uncertain about how the concepts of "structure" and "function" may be applied to animal behavior, here is some background information. Note that ethologists use the words "causation" "causal mechanism" and "form" interchangebly with "structure".

• Concept map from a college course on ethology
• for more details, read Tinbergen's Four Questions on Wikipedia.org

Activities:

Jump right in and learn by doing! You may choose to download this module and save it on your computer so that you can work off-line. You may print it and write on it with a pencil, or use the tools in Adobe Reader (9: typewriter tool; 8: advanced text tool) to write directly on the pdf file on your computer. If this guided inquiry is not intuitive, we recommend reading the teacher's manual for some handy tips. If you are familiar with spreadsheets, you may choose to download the entire curriculum and use the Excel Workbook.

• Module 1 [printable pdf]
• Video [albums]
• Entire prey curriculum [microsoft excel workbook]

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