ethology (redirected from Bestial Instinct)

ethology, study of animal behavior based on the systematic observation, recording, and analysis of how animals function, with special attention to physiological, ecological, and evolutionary aspects. Laboratory or field experiments designed to test a proposed explanation must be rigorous, repeatable, and show the role of natural selection. At one time, an organism's actions were classified as either instinctive or learned behavior; the former included those actions, such as common reflexes, that are not influenced by the animal's previous experience; the latter comprised those actions, such as problem solving, that are dependent on earlier experiences. Current thinking emphasizes the complex interaction of environment and genetically determined responses, especially during early development. Among the early ethologists were Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, G. J. Romanes, and William James. Zoologists Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen are widely considered to be the founders of modern ethology. In 1973 they and zoologist Karl von Frisch were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in shaping the science of comparative animal behavior. See instinct; imprinting; sociobiology.

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ethology

Study of animal behaviour. It is a combination of laboratory and field science, with strong ties to other disciplines (e.g., neuroanatomy, ecology, evolution). Though many naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour through the centuries, the modern science of ethology is considered to have arisen as a discrete discipline with the work in the 1920s of Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. Interested in the behavioral process rather than in a particular animal group, ethologists often study one type of behaviour (e.g., aggression) in various unrelated animals.

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ethology [ē′thäl·ə·jē]

(vertebrate zoology)

The study of animal behavior in a natural context.

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Ethology

The study of animal behavior. Modern ethology includes many different approaches, but the original emphasis, as expounded by Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, was placed on the natural behavior of animals. This contrasted with the focus of comparative psychologists on behavior in artificial laboratory situations such as mazes and puzzle boxes. Ethologists view the naturalistic approach as crucial because it reveals the environmental and social circumstances in which the behavior originally evolved, and prepares the way for more realistically designed laboratory experiments. The approach goes back to the stress that Charles Darwin placed on hereditary contributions to behavior in all species, including humans. Viewing behavior as a product of evolutionary history has helped to elucidate many otherwise puzzling aspects of its biology and has paved the way for the new science of neuroethology, concerned with how the structure and functioning of the brain controls behavior and makes learning possible.

A central concept in classical ethology is that of the innate release mechanism. If a species has had a long history of experience with certain stimuli, especially those involving survival and reproduction, then to the extent that genes affect the ability to attend closely to such stimuli, natural selection leads to adaptations enhancing responsiveness to them. A common first step in the study of these adaptations was investigation of the development of responsiveness to such stimuli in infancy, focusing on situations that the ethologist knew to be especially relevant to survival. The term innate releasing mechanism, set forth by Tinbergen and Lorenz, eschews notions of innate mental imagery and has proved fertile in understanding how genes influence behavioral development, and in focusing attention of neuroethologists on inborn physiological mechanisms that permit learning while encouraging the infant to attend closely to very specific stimuli, the nature of which varies from species to species according to differences in ecology and social organization.

Modern research on the ethology of learning began when Lorenz discovered imprinting in geese. He found that if he led a flock of newly hatched goslings himself they became imprinted on him. When mature, they would court people as though confused about their own species identity. Learning occurred very rapidly and tended to be restricted to a short sensitive phase early in life. The learning is highly focused by genetically determined preferences both to follow a parent-object with particular appearance and emitting species-specific calls, and also to learn most quickly and accurately at a particular stage of development. The interplay between nature (genetic predisposition) and nurture (environmental influence) in learning is displayed especially clearly in imprinting, hence its special interest to biologists and psychiatrists. Indications are that it is not concerned so much with learning about species as with learning to recognize individual parents and kin, both to ensure mating with one's own kind and to avoid incestuous inbreeding.

There are many forms of imprinting. So-called filial imprinting, ensuring that ducklings and goslings follow only their parent, is distinct from sexual imprinting, affecting mate choice in adulthood; the sensitive phases for learning are different in each case. Imprinting-like processes also shape the development of food preferences and abilities to use the Sun and stars in navigation.

Unlike psychological studies of animal learning in the laboratory, which have tended to favor the “blank-slate” view of the brain's contribution to learning, ethology emphasizes the need to understand all aspects of the biology of a species under study before one can hope to understand how the animal learns to cope with the many complexities of individual existence and social living. Thus ethology may lead not only to an understanding of how natural behavior evolves, but also to new insights into how brains help organisms learn to cope with social and environmental problems confronting them as individuals. See Animal communication, Behavior genetics, Instinctive behavior