Science fair projects about animals and social studies would include projects about animal cleaning habits. Students could research how animals groom themselves. Students can observe their pets in their own grooming behaviors, such as cats licking themselves. Students can also compare animal grooming techniques, such as monkeys picking through their hair with humans picking their teeth. Other projects should look into the reasons why animals need to groom themselves and if it increases their chances for mating or for general survival.
Students should explore why animals establish territories. Students should research pack animals, such as wolves, who create territories for hunting and uncover reasons how these kinds of animals defend their territory. Students can also compare wild animals, such as geese, and domestic animals, such as chickens. They can research if domestic animals defend their turf against other animals or if it is species-specific. Other projects would include the differences between dog territoriality and human territoriality.
Projects about conditioned responses would be research into positive reinforcement versus negative punishment in dog training. Students should research general effects of rewards, such as candy and toys on humans in the workplace or in the classroom. Students can observe how conditioned responses are created with rewards and what types of rewards work most effectively. In dog training, for example, students should explore if food rewards work better than positive words and petting.
Stimulus and response projects should explore which senses are the strongest in humans. Through simple experiments, students should study if people respond to a stimulus that is seen faster than a stimulus that is heard. Students can test response times from a bell sounding or a light flashing. Another project would be determining which sense produces the fastest response time: hearing, touching, smelling or seeing. Students can also compare these observations to other animals, such as dogs.