In ethology, a fixed action pattern (FAP), or modal action pattern, is an instinctive behavioral sequence that is indivisible and runs to completion. Fixed action patterns are invariant and are produced by a neural network known as the innate releasing mechanism in response to an external sensory stimulus known as a sign stimulus or releaser (a signal from one individual to another). A fixed action pattern is one of the few types of behaviors which can be said to be hard-wired and instinctive.
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Famous quotes containing the words fixed, action and/or pattern:
“These earthly godfathers of Heaven’s lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas.... But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)