Observe several animals, including the humans on our campus. Try to identify, describe, and sort the behaviors you see, and try to explain how they work and why they might exist.

Share what you understand about fundamental ideas of animal behavior, including the goals of the discipline and what might be the "purpose" of a range of unique behaviors across the animal kingdom.

Observe and describe a real animal behavior, Identify the category that behavior belongs in, whether you think it is learned, innate, or both, and how that kind of behavior might contribute to survival and reproduction.

Use what we have learned so far to create a real-world resource that promotes safe, respectful, and informed interactions between humans and dogs.

Across the planet, life moves in a thousand different rhythms. A dog waits at a door, tail steady with hope. A spider spins silk into a perfect spiral. Dolphins pass air rings between them like slow-motion toys. Ants march in an unbroken line toward a feast. Every species carries its own ways of finding food, shelter, and safety—some with cunning solitude, others with deep cooperation.

Some acts are sharp with competition: a hawk diving on prey before another can strike, a dominant wolf guarding a hard-won meal. Others are softened with generosity: elephants standing over a fallen calf until help arrives, vampire bats sharing blood meals with a hungry roost-mate. Even the same species can swing between the two, depending on the moment.

Though their forms and instincts differ wildly, the thread is the same—life reaching for what it needs. Every chase, every gift, every clever theft is a move in the same ancient game: to endure, to pass something forward, to keep the story of a species alive. In the patterns of their choices, we can see ourselves—not separate from them, but another variation in the endless experiment of survival.