The conditional operator in C is a ternary operator that is used for conditional evaluation. It is also known as the ternary operator because it operates on three operands. The conditional operator is a shorter version of the if-else statement for cases where the if statement would only have one statement. The syntax of the conditional operator in C is as follows:

variable = Expression1 ? Expression2 : Expression3;

The conditional operator takes an expression and executes the first statement if the expression evaluates to be true, and the second statement if the expression evaluates to be false. The behavior of the conditional operator is similar to the if-else statement, as the if-else statement is also a decision-making statement. The conditional operator is used to write if-else statements in the shortest way possible. The conditional operator can be used in bigger conditions, but it can make the program very complex and unreadable.