Notes � Animal behaviour I, The four problems of ethology

Greg Detre

Wednesday, 25 April, 2001

Prof. Steve Simpson, Natural History Museum

 

Essay title

Tinbergen�s Four Why�s - where are we now?

Reading

Tinbergen, N. (1963) On aims and methods in Ethology. Z. Tierpsychol. 20, 410-433.

Dawkins, M.S. (1989) The future of Ethology: how many legs are we standing on? Persp. Ethol. 8, 47-54.

Dewsbury, D.A. (1992) On the problems studied in ethology, comparative psychology, and animal behaviour. Ethology 92, 89-107.

 

Notes

causation - What causes the display of this behavior (mechanism)?

survival value - What is the function of the behavior?

ontogeny - How does this behavior change during the lifetime of the animal?

evolution - From where did this behavior evolve?

 

Roeder (1966/7???) - web

3.� In Chapter Two, Roeder divides the study of animal behavior (in his time) into four sub-disciplines: Ethology, Psychology, Animal Orientation, and Physiology. What are the major differences among these disciplines? What is the relationship between these four disciplines and the Niko Tinbergen's `four questions' (see page 2 of your textbook). Given what you have learned so far in class of approaches in Animal Behavior over the last 40 years, how would you divide up the field into sub-disciplines?

What is behaviour? � web

  1. "Behavior is motion." This ignores many types of behavior, such as the fright response and sleep.
  2. "What a plant or animal does, in the course of an individual's lifetime, in response to some event or change in its environment." (Silvertown, J. and Gordon, D. M. A framework for plant behavior. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 20:349-366, 1989). This equates behavior to phenotypic plasticity. It is not specific enough.
  3. "Behavior is all observable or otherwise measurable muscular and secretory responses (or lack thereof) and related phenomena in response to changes in an animal's internal or external environment." (J.W. Grier and T. Burk, Biology of Animal Behavior, 1992). This limits "behavior" only to those things which are measurable.
  4. "Behavior is characterized by entropic and energetic transductions by an organism, in which the long-term averages convert high entropic and low energetic sensory inputs into low entropic and high energetic outputs." (Hailman, J. P. Optical Signals: Animal Communication and Light, 1977). This may be too complicated to be useful.

Quotes

 

Discarded

 

Points

 

Glossary

ethology /i:"TQl<schwa>dZi/ n.M17. [L ethologia f. Gk, f. ethos: see ETHOS, -LOGY.]<unknown>1 The portrayal of character by mimic gestures, mimicry; an exposition of or treatise on manners. rare. M�L17. 2 The science of character formation. M19. 3 The branch of science that deals with animal behaviour, esp. in the wild. L19. etho'logical a. M18.ethologist n. M18.

Questions

Where did he intend ethology to fit in within the grand scheme of a Biology of Behaviour???

What are: stimulus filtering, "releasers", species typical behaviour ("fixed action patterns"), hormonal influences on behaviour, motivation, the concept of consciousness, genotypic influences on behaviour, learning, ritualization, phylogeny of behaviour, the use of game theory and cost-benefit analysis in behavioural ecology???