You will read a short passage, listen to a talk, and answer a question about

Now listen to part of a lecture on this topic in a ethology class.
    As you should all know from doing the reading assignment, a releaser is a stimulus that elicits a specific and predictable behavioral response in animals. The stimulus could be a sound, a smell, a movement, or a flash of color. When an animal observes this stimulus, the animal will in turn instinctively and reflexively perform a corresponding behavior. Let’s look at two examples so that you can better understand this biological phenomenon.
    My first example is a toad. Toads love to eat worms. In fact, toads will attempt to eat anything that looks and acts like a worm. Ethologists tested this by placing a pencil near the toads and continuously moving it. To the toad, the moving and shaking pencil appeared to be a worm. This moving and shaking of a worm-like object acted as the releaser for the toad and elicited a specific and predictable response. This instinctive response was to attack the pencil and try to eat it.
    My second example is geese. When geese want to protect their eggs, they use their beaks to pick up objects and throw these objects into their nests to protect the eggs. Eggs are round in shape and ethologists use similarly round objects to mimic goose eggs. When the ethologists tested for behavioral responses from the geese, the geese were found to respond in an aggressive manner defending their nests when they believed that their eggs were being harassed. In this scenario the round objects acted as a releaser causing the geese to act in a predictable manner to defend their unborn young. Hopefully these two examples help you understand the relationship between releaser and it’s corresponding behavior.