BIOL 3250

Horrible Class. The science is not very hard, but Professor Friesen tests examples not concepts. THese examples come from videos,powerpoints, book, etc. Interesting topic, way harder than it should be

I came into this class fully expecting to hate it, mostly because I hate dealing with animals. However, I ended up enjoying this class a lot more than I thought I would. Animals are hella weird. Take notes during lecture, you really don't need to read the book; almost everything he asks comes from lecture. Only downside is that everyone does really well on the tests despite all of these reviews saying they're really tricky. Read carefully and you'll do fine.

Enjoyable topic, but Otto sometimes made it dry. Lectures followed the book very closely, but sometimes testable facts were in one but not the other. Tests picky and sometimes poorly worded, but not the worst.

Easy material, really tricky tests. Study for the tests even though the concepts are easy; he's the type of professor who makes a bunch of answer choices sound right except for little things. Nonetheless, you learn some fascinating stuff in this class.

This class is loaded with soft science. If you're into that thing, take it (non-science majors). Personally, I would like to see more neural mechanisms. For instance, the text makes no mention of interesting sensory systems processing outside of insect evasion central pattern generators. Otto is a good scientist, so I'm surprised he doesn't focus more on this. There is also a lot of evolution. It's basically a psychology class for animals.

No workload other than reading / class which is nice. He does take attendance. You watch a movie every Friday which is awesome, but beware that he does ask questions from the movies. The subject was generally pretty cool. He likes to make his test questions pretty tricky / ambiguous. The difference between the right and wrong choice can come down to some pretty nuanced differences between words.

This class was pretty difficult even though I always did the reading.

He was all over the place in his lectures and his tests were a bit hard, but overall, seemed like a funny guy.

Animal Behavior is awesome! This was a great class. The lectures are interesting and class goes by fast. There is a movie every friday. TAKE IT!!!

good class, interesting topics, plus you get to watch hilarious BBC videos every friday. the tests aren't hard if you go to class

Friesen is really enthusiastic and excited about the course, which is always helpful. Most of the time lectures are interesting, but certian concepts (bird song, for one) get beaten into the ground. Every Friday you watch movies. Midterms aren't aren't extremely easy and sometimes involve rather esoteric questions from the text on concepts never discussed in class, so beware of that.

Lectures can be a little confusing, with a few too many examples, but sometimes you learn some really cool stuff