The sea anemone in Figure 2 never learned to swim away from the sea star, but it still knows to move to safety. This is an example of an innate behavior, sometimes called an instinctive behavior. Innate behaviors are passed from generation to generation without learning.

The orca shown in the video intentionally beaches itself to hunt seals in the shallow waters. Only orcas in certain parts of the world, and only certain groups, exhibit this behavior. Orcas learn this from their mothers and other members in their group and will teach it to their offspring as long as the behavior is advantageous.

Some migration cues are biological. In some species, depletion of energy reserves may signal a need to travel to available food sources. In others, changes in hormone levels or reproductive life cycles trigger mass movements. The breeding ritual of the red crabs of Christmas Island starts at the beginning of the rainy season. The crabs must migrate at this time because their eggs must be released in the sea before sunrise during the last quarter phase of the moon.

Risk costs are the increased chance of being injured or killed by carrying out a certain behavior versus doing nothing.

Opportunity costs result when an animal spends time doing one behavior and loses an opportunity to do a different behavior.

For example,  blue-footed boobies high step and strut to show off their blue feet to potential partners. The pigment that gives the blue-footed booby its bright blue feet comes from its food. So an individual that is more successful at finding food will have brighter feet. The courtship "dance" helps females find the most fit partner.

For example, adult penguins will sometimes put themselves between their young and a petrel, who will eat young penguins. Groups of animals also will warn each other of danger with different vocalizations. Vervet monkeys, for example, use one call to indicate that a predator is a snake and another to indicate that it is a large cat or bird. This tells group members where to look and where to escape.

Vampire bats live together in tightly knit communities, providing protection and warmth to each other. A female vampire bat will donate food that she has collected from her hunt to a bat that is unable to hunt for its own food, voluntarily regurgitating and sharing part of its meal. This comes at a cost to the donor bat, because it has used energy to gather the food and is losing some energy by sharing.

Vampire bats keep track of which bats share food and, in turn, will share food with those bats. This is an example of reciprocity, another form of cooperative behavior among animals. The idea is that one action, such as sharing food, will result in a future beneficial response, such as being the recipient of shared food. Research has shown that bats in need of food received more donations if they had previously shared food with other bats.