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Operant learning / Associative learning
Animals can learn to associate a voluntary action with something that happens. This type of 
learning is done by trial and error; B.F Skinner made “skinner” boxes in which he placed rats. After a while of these rats being in the box they would accidentally stumble upon and knock a bar which would release food into a food hopper, now, the rats wouldn't notice immediately that the food had been released, but would fairly soon after pressing the bar. This process of the rat knocking the bar and finding the food would happen a number of times (as the rat is trying to find a means of escaping) until they realise that the food is appearing because of the bar pressing and they will then continually press the bar over and over again to get more food out. The rats had learnt that it would be rewarded with food it they pressed the bar.
Another really famous example is Ivan Pavlov and his dogs. He would restrain a hungry dog in a harness and would give it small amounts of food. Whilst he did this he would regularly ring a bell. He wanted to measure the effects this would have of the dog and to see if it learnt that it would be fed when the bell rang. He measured the amount of saliva that the dog produced. He found that after a while of the dog associating the bell with being given food the dog would actually salivate more and more. The bell is known as the conditional stimulus and the food was the unconditional stimulus; so when the dog salivated over the food, we were seeing an unconditional response as this was something that the dog would do regardless but the salivation when the bell rang was a conditional response. The dog salivated when the bell rang because it knew that it was about to be fed, it got to the point where you could ring the bell after and during being fed that the dog would salivate more profusely.
Animals in the wild learn exactly in the same manner, for example, if they see some food that they haven't come across before, eat and find that it tastes nasty they will not eat it again. They will then remember what it was and associate the colouring and patterning with other foods and know not to eat these either. For example some birds will learn after a few tries that the black and yellow cinnabar moths taste evil and then not eat anything that is black and yellow, like wasps.
