2016, Pages 1–26
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Animal
behavior is the study of how animals move in their environment, how
they interact socially, how they learn about their environment, and how
an animal might achieve cognitive understanding of its environment. The
Nobel Prize winning scientist Niko Tinbergen developed four guiding
questions for examining behavior. He argued that behavior should be
understood in terms of its development, mechanism, adaptive value, and
evolution. In this chapter, we show how these questions establish the
framework for modern analyses of animal behavior. This chapter also
gives an overview of the history of behavioral studies and evolutionary
principles as they apply to animal behavior. Through the four questions,
we gain an intellectual and scientific framework for the analysis of
behavior.
Keywords
- Niko Tinbergen;
- Konrad Lorenz;
- Karl von Frisch;
- Daniel Lehrman;
- Tinbergen’s four questions;
- adaptive value;
- mechanism;
- evolution;
- development;
- ethology;
- comparative psychology
Learning Objectives
Studying this chapter should provide you with the knowledge to:- ●
- Understand that behavior, broadly defined, includes movement, social interaction, cognition, and learning.
- ●
- See that adaptive mechanisms provided by behavior give animals tools for adjusting to their environments and for manipulating the world around them.
- ●
- Be able to illustrate that four central questions drive the study of behavior. These are mechanism, utility, development (ontogeny), and evolution. Use these questions to form testable hypotheses about behavior.
- ●
- Integrate the basic principles of evolution with an understanding of animal behavior.
- ●
- Discover that the roots of contemporary studies of animal behavior are in ethology, comparative psychology, sociobiology, and behavioral ecology.
Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
