Ethology is the study of animal behavior from innate to learned behaviors. Starting from innate and working up.
Instinct is something every person and animal is born with.
After instinct comes fixed action pattern, FAP used in ethology to denote an instinctive behavioral sequence that is relatively invariant within the species and almost inevitably runs to completion.
Imprinting is a stage of animal behavior that occurs at a critical point in an animal’s life, so whatever or whoever is present at that time is who the animal imprints to. Then the stages of actual learning, starting with associative learning... Associative Learning- when animal becomes aware that there is a stimulus and an action.
Then there is classical conditioninga learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired; a response that is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.
Trial and error is simply the animal’s ability to test certain stimulus and remember its outcome.
One of the last steps of learning habituation the diminishing of a physiological or emotional response to a frequently repeated stimulus.
Finally, insight is the ability of an animal to figure out a problem. Chimpanzees, dolphins, and more animals have this ability.