What Does an Ethologist Do? (with pictures) What Does an Ethologist Do? Last Modified Date: 10 January 2017 Copyright Protected: These 10 facts about space will blow your mind An ethologist studies the behavior of animals. While there are other types of careers in which a person may study animals, this one has a specific primary focus: An ethologist studies animal behavior that seems to come naturally and appears to be pre-programmed into the animal despite its environment. In other words, ethologists are particularly interested in the types of behavior animals do not learn but instead inherit. They do take into account, however, that pre-programmed behavior can be affected by outside factors as well. When a person is referred to as an ethologist, this means he studies animal behavior, and there are a lot of different reasons a scientist might do so. For example, people with this type of job study animals to learn about the causes of their behaviors, how their behaviors develop and evolve, and how animal behavior effects other animals and the environment. The information ethologists learn through their studies helps satisfy curiosity about animal life and makes it easier for scientists to understand a range of biology processes.

The results of animal studies can also help explain and solve issues with animal and human interactions. The focus of ethologists' studies differs from other types of scientists who study animals. Other scientists, such as animal behaviorists, are often more concerned with animal behaviors that are learned rather than those that are naturally present in the animal and considered pre-programmed. For example, an animal behaviorist might focus on the behavior of rats that learn to navigate their way through a manmade maze . An ethologist does not usually disregard such learned behaviors, but often proves more interested innate behaviors, such as the communication sounds an animal makes. One example of a behavior an ethologist might study is referred to as imprinting, which is demonstrated in the way some animals identify and learn to follow their mothers. Some animals, for example, recognize their mothers based on hearing a specific call. Then, when the animal they have identified as their mother moves, the young animals follow. Interestingly, many animals exhibit this behavior even if the sound is not produced by another animal or comes from an object that couldn't possibly be its mother.

Additionally, imprinting is sometimes time dependent, and some animals won't exhibit this type of behavior unless exposed to the trigger, such as a specific sound and movement, early on in life. Ad Ethology: The Study of Animal Behavior Ethology: The Study of Animal Behavior Ethology: The Study of Animal Behavior Dogs Written by: Dr. Nicholas Dodman Last Modified: August 25, 2015 Share This Article Read by: 135,387 pet lovers Ethology: The Study of Animal Behavior Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior. The word itself is derived from the Greek words ethos (meaning custom or character) and logos (meaning speech, word, controlling principal, fundamental reason). In order to study the "custom or character" of a species it is necessary to observe it in a natural setting. However, to study the principles underlying the observed behaviors it is sometimes necessary to create different environments. In short, ethology helps explain the complicated interaction between naturally encoded "innate" behaviors and the environment. In the earlier part of the 20th century, animal behavior was studied mainly by means of laboratory experiments.

This empirical approach led to many great discoveries, such as Thorndyke's "Law of Effect" and Skinnerian behaviorism, with its theme of positive and negative reinforcers of operant behaviors. Ethology became a respectable discipline a few decades later when European behaviorists (ethologists) Drs. Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen entered the scene. These two scientists came up with momentous discoveries, such as imprinting, critical periods of development, releasers of behavior, fixed action patterns, behavioral drives, and the concept of displacement behaviors. Lorenz and Tinbergen, along with bee behavior aficionado, Karl von Frisch, shared a Nobel Prize in 1973 for their contributions to the study of animal behavior. While some of the details of the theories have been debated and modified, the fundamental principles they unearthed still apply. Behaviorism and ethology are two different ways of studying animal behavior; one is confined largely to the laboratory (behaviorism), and the other is based on field studies (ethology). Each tells us something different about an animal's response, but the conclusions from both disciplines, taken together, explain all that we see and understand about animal behavior.

In clinical behavior problem management, knowing a species' ethology often tells us a lot about WHY the animal is exhibiting a behavior, although learning and conditioning also factor in. To devise a program to modify unwanted behavior, more reliance is placed on behaviorism-based learning theory, desensitization, and classical and operant conditioning. The Great Discoveries of Ethology Fixed action patterns. Intrinsic, physiologically encoded behavioral sequences (e.g. egg rolling in herring gulls). Sign stimuli/releasers as triggers for survival-necessary behaviors (e.g. the red spot on a gull's beak that signals the chick to peck at it and thus the adult gull to regurgitate food). Imprinting/sensitive periods of learning. Early periods of life in which specific learning occurs rapidly and sometimes with permanent effects. Vacuum activities. A repetitive pattern of behavior that occurs in the absence of external stimuli, e.g. a solitary dog chasing his tail (frustrated predatory drive). Displacement behaviors. Seemingly out-of-context behaviors that occur when an activated drive is denied an outlet through its own natural pathway (e.g. when an animal in conflict starts to groom himself).

Having a basic understanding of ethology is important to pet owners and animal behaviorists alike. To some degree, many pet owners understand what constitutes typical behavior for their pet's species. They buy "prey" toys for their cats and dogs to play with, assume a role as leader/provider, and nurture their pet. When a behaviorist is confronted with a behavior to analyze and/or treat, an ethological analysis is often the first step. For example, an aggressive dog may be performing a species-typical social behavior that requires reconfiguration of family dynamics. Feuding cats may have territorial concerns that can be addressed by environmental manipulation and reconditioning. A fearful dog may have experienced adverse early experiences and may require to be desensitized and alternatively conditioned, with or without the help of anti-anxiety medication. A dog that paces in circles mindlessly may have developed this habit as a displacement behavior following a period of stress or conflict. Compulsive behaviors, in general, are expressed as a logical spectrum when viewed from an ethological perspective. In short, ethology, loosely translated, a study of natural species typical behavior, is absolutely critical to a fundamental understanding of animal behavior and the logical treatment of animal behavior problems.

(?) Cognitive Ethology: The Comparative Study of Animal Minds Bekoff, Marc (1995) Cognitive Ethology: The Comparative Study of Animal Minds. In: Blackwell Companion to Cognitive Science. William Bechtel and George Graham (eds), Blackwell Publishers, Oxford COGNITIVE ETHOLOGY: THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ANIMAL MINDS A companion to cognitive science William Bechtel and George Graham (eds) Blackwell Publishers, Oxford Please address all correspondence to: NATURALIZING ANIMAL MINDS Cognitive ethology is the comparative, evolutionary, and ecological study of nonhuman animal (hereafter animal) minds including thought processes, beliefs, rationality, information-processing, and consciousness. It is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of science that is attracting much attention from researchers in numerous and diverse disciplines including those interested in animal welfare (Cheney and Seyfarth, 1990; Ristau, 1991; Griffin, 1992; Allen and Bekoff, 1995, 1997; Bekoff and Allen, 1996; Bekoff and Jamieson, 1996).

Cognitive ethology can trace its beginnings to the writings of Charles Darwin, an anecdotal cognitivist (Jamieson and Bekoff, 1993), and some of his contemporaries and disciples. Their approach incorporated appeals to evolutionary theory, interests in mental continuity, concerns with individual and intraspecific variation, interests in the worlds of the animals themselves, close associations with natural history, and attempts to learn more about the behavior of animals in conditions that are as close as possible to the natural environment where selection has occurred. They also relied on anecdote and anthropomorphism to inform and to motivate more rigorous study. In addition, cognitive ethologists are frequently concerned with the diversity of solutions that living organisms have found for common problems. They also emphasize broad taxonomic comparisons and do not focus on a few select representatives of limited taxa. Many people inform their views of cognitive ethology by appealing to the same studies over and over again (usually those done on nonhuman primates), and ignore the fact that there are many other animals who also show interesting patterns of behavior that lend themselves to cognitive studies.

Comparative cognitive ethology is an important extension of classical ethology because it explicitly licenses hypotheses about the internal states of animals in the tradition of classical ethologists such as Nobel laureates Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. However, although ethologists such as Lorenz and Tinbergen used terms such as "intention movements," they used them quite differently from how they are used in the philosophical literature. "Intention movements" refers to preparatory movements that might communicate what action individuals are likely to do next, and not necessarily to their beliefs and desires, although one might suppose that the individuals did indeed want to fly and believed that if they moved their wings in a certain way they would fly. This distinction is important to mark because the use of such terms does not necessarily add a cognitive dimension to classical ethological notions, although it could. In his early work Tinbergen identified four overlapping areas with which ethological investigations should be concerned -- namely, evolution (phylogeny), adaptation (function), causation, and development (ontogeny), and his framework also is useful for those interested in animal cognition (Jamieson and Bekoff, 1993).

The methods for answering questions in each of these areas vary, but all begin with careful observation and description of the behavior patterns that are performed by the animals under study. The information afforded by these initial observations allows a researcher to exploit the animal's normal behavioral repertoire to answer questions about the evolution, function, causation, and development of the behavior patterns that are performed in various contexts. Donald R. Griffin and modern cognitive ethology The modern era of cognitive ethology and its concentration on the evolution and evolutionary continuity of animal cognition is usually thought to have begun with the appearance of Donald R. Griffin's (1976/1981) book The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience. Griffin's major concern was to learn more about animal consciousness, and then, as now, Griffin wanted to come to terms with the difficult question of "what is it like to be a particular animal?" (for critical discussion of Griffin's agenda see Jamieson and Bekoff, 1993). While Griffin was mainly concerned with the phenomenology of animal consciousness, it is only one of many important and interesting aspects of animal cognition (Allen and Bekoff, 1997).

Indeed, because of its broad agenda and wide-ranging goals, many view cognitive ethology as being a genuine contributor to cognitive science in general. For those who are anthropocentrically minded, it should be noted that studies of animal cognition can also inform, for example, inquiries into human autism. METHODS OF STUDY Ethologists interested in animal minds favor research in conditions that are as close as possible to the natural environments in which natural selection occurred or is occurring. When needed, research on captive animals also can inform the comparative study of animal cognition, but cognitive ethologists are resistant to suggestions that (i) field studies of animal cognition are impossible (difficult, yes, but certainly not impossible), (ii) they should give up in their attempts to study animal minds under natural conditions, and (iii) studies of learning and memory are all that are needed to learn about animal cognition. Naturalizing the study of animal cognition and animal minds in the laboratory and in the field should lead to a greater appreciation for the cognitive skills of animals living under natural conditions. Animal minds can be studied rigorously using methods of natural science and will not ultimately have to be reduced or eliminated.

The tractability of cognitive questions involves application of a diverse set of comparative methods in order to draw inferences about cognitive states and capacities. Cognitive research may include staged social encounters, playback of recorded vocalizations, the presentation of stimuli in different modalities, observation of predator-prey interactions, observation of foraging behavior, neurobiological techniques, and studies of social and other sorts of learning. Computer analyses also are useful for those who want to learn what kind of information must be represented in an adequate computational model. There are no large differences between methods used to study animal cognition and those used to study other aspects of animal behavior. Differences lie not so much in what is done and how it is done, but rather how data are explained. Allen and Bekoff (1997) argue that the main distinction between cognitive ethology and classical ethology lies not in the types of data collected, but in the understanding of the conceptual resources that are appropriate for explaining those data. Perhaps one area that will contribute more to the study of animal minds than it does to other areas of comparative ethology is neurobiology and behavior.

Those interested in the cellular or neural bases of behavior and animal cognition and consciousness may use techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) that are also employed in other endeavors. In general, studies using brain imaging (see APPLICATIONS OF NEUROIMAGING TO THE STUDY OF COGNITION) have provided extremely valuable data for humans engaged in various sorts of activities, whereas the use of these and other imaging techniques on animals has not been pursued rigorously for individuals engaged in activities other than learning or memory in captivity. Furthermore, while neurobiological studies are extremely important to those interested in animal cognition, there remains an explanatory gap between neurophysiological processes and behavior. Behavioral studies usually start with the observation, description, and categorization of behavior patterns that animals perform. The result of this process is the development of an ethogram, or behavioral catalogue, of these actions. Ethograms present information about an action's form or morphology and its code name. Descriptions can be based on visual information (what an action looks like), auditory characteristics (sonograms, which are pictures of sounds), or chemical constituents (output of chromatographic analyses of glandular deposits or urine or feces, for example).

It is essential that great care be given to the development of an ethogram, for it is an inventory that others should be able to replicate without error. Permanent records of observations allow others to cross-check their observations and descriptions against original records. The number of actions and the breadth of categories that are identified in a behavioral study depends on the questions at hand, but generally it is better to split rather than to lump actions in initial stages, and lump when questions of interest have been carefully laid out. In studies of behavior it is important to know as much as possible about the sensory world of the animals being studied. Experiments should not be designed that ask animals to do things that they cannot do because they are insensitive to the experimental stimuli or unmotivated by the stimuli. The relationships between normal ecological conditions and differences between the capabilities of animals to acquire, process, and respond to information is the domain of a growing field called "sensory ecology". A good ethologist asks "what is it like to be the animal under study" and develops an awareness of the senses that the animals use singly or in combination with one another.

It is highly unlikely that individuals of any other species sense the world the same way we do, and it is unlikely that even members of the same species sense the world identically all of the time, and it is important to remain alert to the possibility of individual variation. Stimulus control and impoverished environments While carefully conducted experiments in the laboratory and in the field often are able to control for the influence of variables that might affect the expression of behavioral responses, it is usually the case that there is a possibility that the influence of some variable(s) cannot be accounted for. Field studies may be more prone to a lack of control because the conditions in which they are conducted are inherently more complex and less controllable. An illustration of the concern for undercontrol is found in the excellent cognitive ethological field research of Cheney and Seyfarth (1990) on the behavior (e.g. communication and deception) and minds of vervet monkeys. In their studies of the attribution of knowledge by vervets to each other, Cheney and Seyfarth played back vocalizations of familiar individuals to other group members. These researchers were, however, concerned about their inability to eliminate "all visual or auditory evidence of the [familiar] animal's physical presence" (p.

230). Actually, this inability may not be problematic if the goal is to understand "how monkeys see the world." Typically, in most social situations the physical presence of individuals and access to stimuli from different modalities may be important to consider. Vervets, other nonhumans, and humans may attribute mental states using a combination of variables that are difficult to separate experimentally. Negative or inconclusive experimental results concerning vervets' or other animals' attribution of mind to other individuals may stem from impoverishing their normal environment by removing information that they normally use in attribution. Researchers might also be looking for complex mechanisms involved in the attribution of minds to others and might overlook relatively simple means for doing so. Just because an animal does not do something does not mean that it cannot do it (assuming that what we are asking the animal to do is reasonable, that is within their sensory and motor capacities). Thus, insistence on absolute experimental control that involves placing and maintaining individuals in captivity and getting them accustomed to test situations that may be unnatural may greatly influence results. And these sorts of claims, if incorrect, can wreak havoc on discussions of the evolutionary continuity of animal cognitive skills.

Cheney and Seyfarth recognize some of these problems in their discussion of the difficulties of distinguishing between alternative explanations maintaining either that a monkey recognizes another's knowledge or a monkey monitors another's behavior and adjusts his own behavior to the other. Although control may be more of a problem in field research than in laboratory work, it certainly is not the case that cognitives ethologist should abandonfield work. Cognitive ethologists and comparative or cognitive psychologists can learn important lessons from one another. On the one hand, cognitive psychologists who specialize in highly controlled experimental procedures can teach something about the importance of control to those cognitive ethologists who do not peform such research. On the other hand, those who study humans and other animals under highly controlled and often contrived and impoverished laboratory conditions can broaden their horizons and learn more about the importance of more naturalistic methods: they can be challenged to develop procedures that take into account possible interactions among stimuli within and between modalities in more naturalistic settings. For example, among those who are interested in important and "hot" questions about animal minds that are typically studied in controlled captive conditions (e.g. inquiries into the possibility of self-recognition) there is a growing awareness that more naturalistic approaches are needed.

The use of single tests relying primarily on one modality, for example vision, for comparative studies represents too narrow an approach. Ultimately, all types of studies should be used to exploit the behavioral flexibility or versatility of the animals under study, a criterion for attributions of complex information processing or consciousness. SOME CRITICISMS OF COGNITIVE ETHOLOGY A balanced view of cognitive ethology requires consideration of critics' points of view.

Criticisms of cognitive ethology come in many flavors but usually center on: (i) the notion that animals do not have minds; (ii) the idea that (many, most, all) animals are not conscious, or that so little of their behavior is conscious (no matter how broadly defined) that it is a waste of time to study animal consciousness (cognitive ethology is really a much broader discipline than this suggests, see below); (iii) the inaccessibility to rigorous study of animal mental states (they are private) and whatever (if anything) might be contained in them; (iv) the assumption that animals do not have any beliefs because the content of their beliefs are not similar to the content of human beliefs; (v) the rigor with which data are collected; (vi) the lack of large empirical data bases; (vii) the nature of the (merely instrumental) "soft," nonparsimonious, yet complex explanations that rely heavily on theoretical constructs (e.g.

minds, mental states) that are offered for the behavioral phenotype under study (they are too anthropomorphic, too folk psychological, or too "as if-fy" -- animals act "as if" they have beliefs or desires or other thoughts about something; and (viii) the heavy reliance on behavior for motivating cognitive explanations (but this is not specific only to cognitive inquiries). While most criticism comes from those who ignore the successes of cognitive ethology, those who dismiss it in principle because of strong and radical behavioristic leanings, or those who do not understand basic philosophical principles that inform cognitive ethology, it should be pointed out that more mechanistic approaches to the study of animal cognition are not without their own faults. For example, comparative psychologists often disregard how relevant a study is to the natural existence of the animals under study and pay too much attention to the logical structure of the experiments being performed without much regard for more naturalistic approaches. Noncognitive mechanistic "rules of thumb" also can be very cumbersome, nonparsimonious, and often appeal to hard-to-imagine past coincidences. Furthermore, it is not clear if the differences between noncognitive rules of thumb and cognitive explanations are differences in degree rather than differences in kind.

Both noncognitive and cognitive explanations can be "just-so" stories (just like many evolutionary explanations) that rely on hypothetical constructs, and neither applies in all situations. THREE CASE STUDIES Three case studies that support the application of a broadly comparative cognitive ethological approach can be found in recent field research of antipredator behavior in birds (Ristau, 1991; Bekoff, 1995a) and field and laboratory research on social play behavior in various canids (domestic dogs, wolves, and coyotes; Bekoff, 1995b). Many other examples can be found in Cheney and Seyfarth (1990), Ristau (1991), Griffin (1992), Allen and Bekoff (1995, 1997), Bekoff and Jamieson (1996) and references therein.

Although Griffin has included the results of many excellent studies of the possibility of language in nonhuman primates, cetaceans, and birds in his broad discussions of animal minds, they do not squarely fall within the primary domain of cognitive ethology as I envision it: the study of natural behaviors in natural settings from an evolutionary and ecological perspective. (Of course, this is not to discount the importance to cognitive ethology of research on captive animals.) Only future research will tell if the behavior of the few captive individuals who have been intensively studied in "language studies" (and those captive individuals observed in other endeavors) is related to the behavior of wild members of the same species, or if the data from captive animals are more an important demonstration of behavioral plasticity and behavioral potential. Ristau studied injury-feigning in piping plovers (the broken-wing display) and wanted to know if she could learn more about deceptive injury-feigning if she viewed the broken-wing display as an intentional or purposeful behavior ("the plover wants to lead the intruder away from her nest or young") rather than a hard-wired reflexive response to the presence of a particular stimulus, a potentially intruding predator.

She studied the direction in which birds moved during the broken-wing display, how they monitored the location of the predator, and the flexibility of the response. Ristau found that birds usually performed the display in the direction that would lead an intruder who was following them further away from the threatened nest or young, and also that birds monitored the intruder's approach and modified their behavior in responses to variations in the intruder's movements. These and other data lead Ristau to conclude that the plover's broken-wing display lent itself to an intentional explanation -- that plovers purposely lead intruders away from their nests or young and modified their behavior in order to do so. In another study of antipredator behavior in birds, Bekoff (1995a) found that western evening grosbeaks modified their vigilance or scanning behavior depending on the way in which individuals were positioned with respect to one another. Grosbeaks and other birds often trade-off scanning for potential predators and feeding -- essentially (and oversimplified), some birds scan while others feed and some birds feed when others scan. Thus, it is hypothesized that individuals want to know what others are doing and learn about others' behavior by trying to watch them.

Bekoff's study of grosbeaks showed that when a flock contained four or more birds, there were large changes in scanning and other patterns of behavior that seemed to be related to ways in which grosbeaks attempted to gather information about other flock members. When birds were arranged in a circular array so that they could see one another easily compared to when they were arranged in a line that made visual monitoring of flock members more difficult, birds who had difficulty seeing one another were (i) more vigilant, (ii) changed their head and body positions more often, (iii) reacted to changes in group size more slowly, (iv) showed less coordination in head movements, and (v) showed more variability in all measures. The differences in behavior between birds organized in circular arrays when compared to birds organized in linear arrays were best explained by accounting for individuals' attempts to learn, via visual monitoring, about what other flock members were doing. This may say something about if and how birds attempt to represent their flock, or at least certain other individuals, to themselves. It may be that individuals form beliefs about what others are most likely doing and predicate their own behavior on these beliefs.

Bekoff argued that cognitive explanations were simpler and less cumbersome than noncognitive rule-of-thumb explanations (e.g. "scan this way if there are this number of birds in this geometric array" or "scan that way if there are that number of birds in that geometric array." Noncognitive rule-of-thumb explanations did not seem to account for the flexibility in animals' behavior as well or as simply as explanations that appealed to cognitive capacities of the animals under study. Social play behavior is another area that lends itself nicely to cognitive inquiries. The study of social play involves issues of communication, intention, role playing, and cooperation, and the results of this type of research may yield clues about the ability of animals to understand each others' intentions. Play also is a phenomenon that occurs in a wide range of species and affords the opportunity for a comparative investigation of cognitive abilities, extending the all-too-common narrow focus on primates that dominates discussions of nonhuman cognition.

A recent study of the structure of play sequences in canids (Bekoff 1995b) showed that an action called the "bow" (an animals crouches on its forepaws, elevates its hindend, and may wag its tail) often is used immediately before and immediately after an action that can be misinterpreted and disrupt ongoing social play. The social play of canids (and of other mammals) contains actions, primarily bites, that are used in other contexts (e.g. agonistic or predatory encounters) that do not contain bows. It is important for individuals to tell others that they want to play with them and not fight with them or eat them, and this message seems to be sent by play-soliciting signals, such as the bow, that occur almost only in the context of social play. In canids and other mammals, actions such as biting accompanied by rapid side-to-side shaking of the head are used in aggressive interactions and also during predation and could be misinterpreted when used in play.

Bekoff hypothesized that if bites accompanied by rapid side-to-side shaking of the head or other behavior patterns could be misread by the recipient and could result in a fight, for example, then the animal who performed the actions that could be misinterpreted might have to communicate to its partner that this action was performed in the context of play and was not meant to be taken as an aggressive or predatory move. On this view, bows would not occur randomly in play sequences; the play atmosphere would be reinforced and maintained by performing bows immediately before or after actions that could be misinterpreted. The results of Bekoff's study of different canids supported the inference that "bows" served to provide information about other actions that followed or preceded it. In addition to sending the message "I want to play" when bows were performed at the beginning of play, bows performed during social play seemed to carry the message "I want to play despite what I am going to do or just did -- I still want to play" when there might be a problem in the sharing of this information between the interacting animals.

The noncognitive rules-of-thumb, "play this way if this happens" and "play that way if that happens" seemed to be too rigid an explanation for the flexible behavior that the animals showed. WHERE TO FROM HERE? There are other examples that could have been chosen, but these three make the case that chauvinism on either side(s) of the debate as to how to study animal behavior and how to explain animal behavior is unwarranted; a pluralistic approach should result in the best understanding of the nonhumans with whom we share the planet. Sometimes some nonhumans (and some humans) behave as stimulus-response machines and at other times some nonhumans (and some humans) behave in ways that are best explained using a rich cognitive vocabulary. Methodological pluralism is needed: species-fair methods need to be tailored to the questions and the animals under consideration, and competing hypotheses and explanations must always be considered. Those interested in animal cognition should resist temptations to be speciesistic cognitivists who make sweeping claims about the cognitive abilities (or lack thereof) for all members of a given species. A concentration on individuals and not on species should form an important part of the agenda for future research in cognitive ethology.

There is a lot of individual variation in behavior within species and sweeping generalizations about what an individual ought to do because she is classified as a member of a given species must be taken with great caution. Furthermore, people often fail to recognize that in many instances sweeping generalizations about the cognitive skills (or lack thereof) of species and not of individuals are based on small data sets from a limited number of individuals representing few taxa, individuals who may have been exposed to a narrow array of behavioral challenges. The importance of studying animals under field conditions cannot be emphasized too strongly. Field research, that includes careful and well-thought out observation, description, and experimentation that does not result in mistreatment of the animals is extremely difficult to duplicate in captivity. While it may be easier to study animals in captivity, they must provided with the complexity of social and other stimuli to which they are exposed in the field; in some cases this might not be possible. Cognitive ethologists should also strive to make the study of animal cognition tractable by carefully operationalizing the processes under study. Cognitive ethology can raise new questions that may be approached from various levels of analysis.

For example, detailed descriptive information about subtle behavior patterns and neuroethological data may be important for informing further studies in animal cognition, and may be useful for explaining data that are already available. Such analyses will not make cognitive ethological investigations superfluous, because behavioral evidence is primary over anatomical or physiological data in assessments of cognitive abilities.

To summarize, those positions that should figure largely in cognitive ethological studies include: (i) remaining open to the possibility of surprises in animal cognitive abilities; (ii) concentrating on comparative, evolutionary, and ecological questions and sampling many different species including domesticated animals -- going beyond primates and avoiding talk of "lower" and "higher" animals, or at least laying out explicit criteria for using these slippery and value-laden terms; (iii) naturalizing methods of study by taking the animals' points of view (talking to them in their own languages) and studying them in conditions that are as close to the conditions in which they typically live; often animals do not do what we expect them do (sometimes prey will approach predators) and knowledge of their natural behavior is important in the development of testable and realistic models of behavior; (iv) trying to understand how cognitive skills used by captive animals may function in more natural settings; (v) studying individual differences; (vi) using all sorts of data, ranging from anecdotes to large data sets; and (vii) appealing to different types of explanations as best explanations of the data under scrutiny.

Cognitive ethology need not model itself on other fields of science such as physics or neurobiology in order to gain credibility. Hard-science envy is what led to the loss of animal and human minds in the early part of the twentieth century. We are a long way from having an adequate data base from which stipulative claims about the taxonomic distribution of various cognitive skills, or about the having of a theory of mind, can be put forth. Consider studies that show that some monkeys cannot perform imitation tasks that some mice can. If the point is to answer the question are monkeys smarter than mice or not it is misleading, for there is no reason to expect a single linear scale of intelligence. In the world of mice it may be more important to be able to do some things than it is in the world of monkeys, but in other respect a monkey may have a capacity that a mouse would lack. There also is much variation within species, and this also must be documented more fully. It is unlikely that science will make complete contact with the nature of animal minds at any single point. Both "soft" (anecdotal) information and "hard" (empirical) data from long-term field research are needed to inform and to motivate further empirical experimental research.

So, questions such as "do mice ape?" or "do apes mice"? are premature. Does this mean that many, some, or no animals have or do not have a mind or a theory of mind? It also would be premature to attempt to answer definitively these questions at this time given our current state of knowledge. I thank Colin Allen, Carron Meaney, Ann Wolfe, Lawrence Shapiro, Eric Saidel, some students in my critical thinking class in animal cognition, and the editors for helpful comments. REFERENCES Allen, C., and Bekoff, M.: Cognitive ethology and the intentionality of animal behaviour. Mind and Language 10 (1995), 313-328. Allen, C., and Bekoff, M.: Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,1997). Bekoff, M.: Vigilance, flock size, and flock geometry: Information gathering by western evening grosbeaks (Aves, fringillidae). Ethology 99 (1995a), 150- 161.

Bekoff, M.: Play signals as punctuation: The structure of social play in canids. Behaviour 132 (1995b), 419-429. Bekoff, M., and Allen, C.: 'Cognitive ethology: Slayers, skeptics, and proponents', Anthropomorphism, Anecdote, and Animals: The Emperor's New Clothes? ed. R. W. Mitchell, N. Thompson, and L. Miles (Albany, New York: SUNY Press 1996), (in press). Bekoff, M., and Jamieson, D., ed.: Readings in Animal Cognition. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996). Cheney, D. L., and Seyfarth, R. M.: How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Griffin, D. R:. Animal Minds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Jamieson, D., and Bekoff, M.: On aims and methods of cognitive ethology.

Philosophy of Science Association, 2 (1992), 110-124. Ristau, C. ed.: Cognitive ethology: The Minds of Other Animals. Essays in Honor of Donald R. Griffin (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991). RECOMMENDED READINGS Allen, C., and Bekoff, M.: Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997). Bekoff, M., and Jamieson, D., ed.: Readings in Animal Cognition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996). Griffin, D. R:. Animal Minds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Ristau, C. ed.: Cognitive Ethology: The Minds of Other Animals. Essays in Honor of Donald R. Griffin (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991). FOR ANNOTATED NAME INDEX Donald R. Griffin, often called "the father of cognitive ethology.

Author of important works in cognitive ethology including: The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience (New York: The Rockefeller University Press, 1976/1981). Prospects for a cognitive ethology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4 (1978), 527- 538. Animal Thinking (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. Press. 1984). Animal Minds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). While Griffin's work has been favorably reviewed in numerous places, it often is dismissed as being too anecdotal and philosophically naive. Regardless, few contest that it was his 1976/1981 book that rekindled interest in the rigorous, comparative, and evolutionary study of nonhuman animal minds. Ethology | Definition of Ethology by Merriam-Webster See words that rhyme with ethology Britannica English: Translation of ethology for Arabic speakers Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about ethology Seen and Heard What made you want to look up ethology? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).

Ethology | Article about ethology by The Free Dictionary Ethology | Article about ethology by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Dictionary , Thesaurus , Medical , Legal , Wikipedia . 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 instinct, term used generally to indicate an innate tendency to action, or pattern of behavior, elicited by specific stimuli and fulfilling vital needs of an organism. Examples of almost purely instinctive behavior are found in the behavior of many lower animals, in which ..... Click the link for more information. ; imprinting imprinting, acquisition of behavior in many animal species, in which, at a critical period early in life, the animals form strong and lasting attachments. Imprinting is important for normal social development. ..... Click the link for more information. ; sociobiology sociobiology, controversial field that studies how natural selection, previously used only to explain the evolution of physical characteristics, shapes behavior in animals and humans. ..... Click the link for more information. . 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 ethology a term used by J.S.

MILL for the ‘science of character’, which he believed would become the basis of explanations within the moral sciences, using the inverse deductive method. the science of animal behaviour, especially where the findings of this study are intended to be extrapolated to the study of human behaviour. Ethology in this sense can be highly controversial, being objected to especially by those sociologists who emphasize the distinctiveness of human consciousness. See also SOCIOBIOLOGY . Ethology one of the schools of study of animal behavior, chiefly concerned with analyzing the genetically determined (that is, hereditary and instinctive) components of behavior and its evolution. The term was first used in biology, in 1859, by the French zoologist E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire to define the study of the species-specific characteristics of animal behavior. Development. The overall study of the behavior of animals in their natural environment has a long history. An enormous amount of descriptive material, as well as some experimental material, was collected in the works of 18th- and 19th-century natural scientists—for example, in the descriptions of the German scholar H. Reimarus and the French scientists G.-L. de Buffon and J. H.

Fabre and in the experimental work of the French zoologist G. Cuvier. It was on the basis of such material that the category of instinctive behavior was singled out and clearly defined. Ethology was directly influenced by the works of C. Darwin. The great number of facts he collected about the behavior of animals in their natural environment made it possible to distinguish the basic categories of behavior—namely, instinct, learning ability, and the elementary ability to reason. Darwin also showed that animals’ behavioral traits, like physical traits, are inherited and subject to change. Using instincts as an example, Darwin indicated the ways in which behavioral traits can evolve in the process of natural selection. The development of ethological notions was directly influenced by the research studies of various scientists (the Englishman D. Spaulding, the American C. O. Whitman, and the German O. Heinroth) who demonstrated experimentally that certain forms of behavior are of innate origin, are uniformly manifested, and are peculiar to certain species. Ethology came into its own in the 1930’s as an independent scientific discipline, distinct from the physiological and psychological schools of behavioral investigation, such as zoopsychology and behaviorism.

The acknowledged founders of ethology are the Austrian zoologist K. Lorenz and the Dutch zoologist N. Tinbergen. Lorenz’ theoretical works of 1931 to 1937 generalized the basic views of his predecessors—the Americans G. Whitman and W. Craig and the Germans J. von Uexküll and O. Heinroth—and of various scientists in other disciplines, such as the American scientists J. Loeb, H. Jennings, and W. MacDougall. The works of Lorenz, Tinbergen, and their followers (including the Dutch scientist G. Baerends and the Germans W. Wickler and P. Leuhausen) laid the foundations of the theory of instinctive behavior. The ideas of classical ethology flourished and gained acceptance (chiefly in Europe) from the 1930’s to the late 1950’s. In the USA, ethological concepts at first met with rather strong opposition on the part of zoopsychologists and behaviorists.

On the one hand, the further evolution of ethological views was influenced by the criticism of physiologists and psychologists; on the other hand, a new generation of ethologists was actively receptive to the advanced ideas of such sciences as ecology and neurophysiology. As a result, during the 1960’s and 1970’s the original ideas of the Lorenz-Tinbergen school tended to be transformed and synthesized into the positions of other behavioral and biological disciplines. Ethology is gradually losing its status as an isolated discipline and is becoming part of the synthesized science of behavior now taking shape. Ethology developed out of field zoology (mainly ornithology) and evolutionary theory, and it is closely and increasingly associated with physiology, ecology, population genetics, and behavioral genetics. Its ties to experimental psychology are growing stronger as well. Ethology’s traditional object of investigation is the behavior of animals in their natural surroundings. A complete description of species-specific animal behavior (using such objective recording methods as film, tape recording, and time studies) serves as the basis for compiling an “ethogram”—a list of individual behavioral acts characteristic of a given species.

The ethograms of different species of animals are subjected to comparative analysis, and it is on such analysis that the study of the evolutionary aspects of their behavior is based. To this end ethologists utilize the entire range of species, from the invertebrates to the anthropoid apes. Some ethologists have started applying these methods to the study of human behavior. In studying animal behavior in the context of the individual development of an organism, ethologists use laboratory methods as well. One such method consists of raising an animal in isolation from the influence of any external environmental factor. This method represented an essential stage in the study of behavioral ontogeny. Of the various investigations of animal behavior undertaken in Russia since the late 19th century, some (for example, those of V. A. Vagner and A. N. Promptov) were close to ethology in their concepts and methods. Nevertheless, the views of the traditional school of ethology were not speedily accepted and developed in the USSR. The situation changed in the 1960’s, largely as a result of translations of books by foreign ethologists. Some of the USSR’s scientific centers are engaged in ethological investigations based on a synthesis of ecological-physiological and physiological-genetic methods.

At the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Animal Ecology, the aim of various research studies on the behavior of mammals and birds is to identify distinctive ontogenetic features, the structure of biocenoses, and the mechanisms of communication—especially acoustic and chemical ones (for example, in V. E. Sokolov’s investigations). Research at the University of Moscow includes studies of the structure of biocenoses and of acoustic signals (such as the investigations of N. P. Naumov) as well as the study of elementary reasoning activities in animals (L. V. Krushinskii). Research on the genetics of animal behavior is centered in the University of Leningrad and the I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology (including the work initiated by M. E. Lobashov) as well as in the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (for example, studies by D. K. Beliaev). Investigations of animal behavior are carried out at a number of other institutions, including natural preserves. Basic traditional tenets.

The conception developed by ethologists was based on the distinctive features that were observed in the ontogenetic development of certain types of behavior. Some of these appear as a fixed stereotypical sequence of actions, usually characterizing all the individuals of a given species and constituting a behavioral pattern—a set of actions performed at a particular stage of ontogenetic development without having been specifically learned. Such behavior patterns were called by Lorenz innate instinctive movements, or coordinated hereditary actions. Many instinctive actions are elicited only in response to certain stimuli, called “triggering” stimuli, or “releasers.” Without any previous individual experience, an animal recognizes such stimuli at their very first appearance; for example, the red spot on the belly of the male stickleback elicits aggressive reactions on the part of other males of the same species. The mechanism through which a movement is executed in response to the corresponding triggering stimulus has been called the “innate releasing mechanism.” A special group of stimuli are those whose recognition requires a specific type of learning, called imprinting. In any given case, a stimulus will be effective for an adult animal only if it has been presented to that animal during a particular “sensitive” period in its early postnatal development.

It was subsequently demonstrated that such “sensitive” periods are characteristic for certain types of learning—for example, the development of a particular birdsong. The study of triggering stimuli and imprinting played an important part in our understanding of the mechanisms of animal communication. It was shown that to a great extent animal communication is a function of triggering stimuli—namely, certain peculiarities of external appearance and coloration, characteristic ritual body movements, or species-specific acoustic signals that elicit the corresponding reactions in other individuals without any previous learning. These ideas were reflected in the hypothesis proposed by Lorenz and later worked out in detail by Tinbergen concerning the internal mechanisms of instinctive behavior; according to this hypothesis, various internal and external factors (such as hormones and temperature) act on the corresponding nerve centers to produce an accumulation of “action energy,” or action potential, that is specific to each drive (for example, hunger or thirst). The buildup of such energy over a certain level leads to the phase of investigative behavior, which is characterized by the great variety of the actions performed by a given individual as well as by different members of the same species. The investigative phase consists of an active search for the stimuli that will satisfy the animal’s drive.

Once the appropriate stimuli are found, the innate releasing mechanism is activated, and the action is completed. In the case of a high buildup of action potential, the concluding action may occur “spontaneously”—that is, without any triggering stimulus. This second phase is species-specific; it is characterized by uniformity of execution and is to a large extent genetically conditioned. It includes what is known as innate instinctive behavior, or hereditary coordination. The Lorenz-Tinbergen hypothesis as a whole has become largely obsolete, although its formulation and testing served to establish the connection between ethology and physiology. The identification of the category of innate instinctive behavior made it possible to use comparative methods in the study of animal behavior and to shift to the investigation of its evolutionary aspects. It was possible to estimate the degree of phylogenetic kinship and to determine the position of individual species in the classification system by using findings about the presence or absence of common traits in different types of animals (that is, in members of different groups as classified in animal systematics). For example, no morphological trait so clearly distinguishes members of the order Columbiformes as does their sucking motion when drinking.

Comparative studies also contributed to the development of ideas about the evolution of different kinds of behavior, about the adaptive significance of specific types of behavior, and about the factors that gave rise to such specific behavior in the course of evolution. The Tinbergen school of ethology made an important contribution to the study of the evolutionry aspects of animal behavior. As a consequence of such research, ethologists were able to describe the effects of the law of natural selection on behavioral traits. Comparisons of the instinctive behavior of members of closely related species, together with the study of intraspecies variations in behavior, laid the foundation for the study of the role of behavior in microevolutionary processes. Lorenz was one of the first to compare the behavior of different members of the Anatidae family. Protracted investigation of the role of behavior in population differentiation showed that behavior affects group composition and, by the same token, influences the fate of the genotypic changes that occur in the population. This proves that behavior is a major factor in microevolution.

Identification of the category of instinctive actions as basic units of behavior made it possible to examine the question of the genotypic foundations of behavior as well as the combination and interrelation of the influence of the environment and the influence of the genotype in the development of individual behavioral traits. The concept of “innateness” was used in ethology to designate behavioral responses that are completely determined by genotypic factors and whose development is not contingent on any special learning or training, as opposed to traits that are “acquired” in the process of development under the influence of specific factors in the external environment. The behavioral response as a whole was viewed by ethologists as a very complex interweaving of innate and acquired components. Present status and problems. The principal schools of thought in which traditional ethological views are still of paramount importance are comparative ethology and the field of study known as socioethology—the latter being concerned with the ways in which biocenoses are organized and with animals’ communication methods.

Scientists engaged in such studies are particularly interested in animal population dynamics, in the various factors controlling the development, structure, and number of groupings of individuals in different species, in the evolution of biocenotic methods of organization, and in the evolutionary succession and interrelation of biocenoses. A contemporary current in ethology is the study of human behavior (as represented by Tinbergen, by the German I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, and by J. Crook of Great Britain), such research being a direct continuation and development of Darwin’s ideas; the study of the biological foundations of human behavior was based on Darwin’s work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. What modern ethologists are chiefly concerned with is the objective recording and accurate description of certain instinctive human actions and certain human reactions to biologically significant stimuli by means of ethological methods and approaches that have been successfully tested in the study of animal behavior. Such studies represent an important stage in the development of evolutionary ideas, inasmuch as they help destroy the idealist notion of a barrier separating man, as a biological species, from animals. The development of ethological research has great import for many aspects of human activity.

For example, the growing influence of anthropogenic factors on the environment makes it imperative to undertake in-depth studies of the behavior of animals in their natural habitat, aiming at the conservation, restoration, and rational utilization of fauna. Knowledge of animal behavior is also very important in various branches of agriculture. As demonstrated in studies by the Soviet scientist D. K. Beliaev and his co-workers, the breeding of fur-bearing animals for behavioral traits can also greatly affect various traits that are economically significant. Detailed studies of the group behavior of agricultural animals are particularly important for the introduction of industrial methods in the maintenance and breeding of such animals. Increasingly important, too, is the study of the mechanisms of animal behavior—for example, in medicine, cybernetics, and bionics, as well as in practical application. Organizations, congresses, and journals. Ethologists’ activities are coordinated by the International Ethological Committee. International ethological conferences are held every four years. The 14th such conference was held in the USA in 1973; the 15th, in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1977.

Two all-Union conferences on animal behavior were held in the USSR—in 1973 and 1977. The principal journals that publish ethological findings are the international journals Behaviour (Leyden, since 1947), Biology of Behaviour (Paris, since 1976), and Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology (Berlin, since 1976), as well as the journals Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie (Berlin-Hamburg, since 1937), Animal Behaviour (London, since 1953), and Animal Behaviour Abstracts (London, since 1973). In the USSR, articles on ethology are published in Zoolo-gicheskii zhurnal, Ekologiia, Zhurnal obshchei biologii, and Bul-leten Moskovskogo obshchestva ispytatelei prirody (Bulletin of the Moscow Society of Naturalists). REFERENCES Ethologist: Job Outlook and Requirements for a Career in Ethology Ethologist: Job Outlook and... Ethologist: Job Outlook and Requirements for a Career in Ethology Ethologists require significant formal education.

Learn about the education, job duties and employment prospects to see if this is the right career for you. Show me popular schools Ethologists analyze and attempt to understand the reasons behind animal behavior. This is more than just a zoo research position: some ethologists work for governments, large companies, and other industries. A graduate degree is generally required to work in this field. Essential Information Ethology is the study of animal behavior. As a subset of zoology, ethology examines such processes as animal aggression, mating habits and animal communication. Ethologists utilize both laboratory and field science methodologies. Many have strong interests in related disciplines, including ecology and evolution sciences. The majority of positions in this field require that applicants hold a graduate degree, although it might be possible to get an entry-level job with a bachelor's degree. Required Education Limited job prospects with a bachelor's degree; graduate degree is common Projected Job Growth (2014-2024)* 4% for zoologists and wildlife biologists Median Annual Salary (2015)* $59,680 for zoologists and wildlife biologists Source: *U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Outlook The U.S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that, between 2014 and 2024, open job positions in zoology and wildlife biology might increase only 4% ( Expansion was expected in areas concerned with population growth and wildlife habitats. Some growing ethology career areas could be connected with biotechnology, such as ethologists studying genetics and disease prevention. Salary Statistics As of May 2015, zoologists and wildlife scientists, including ethologists, earned an annual median salary of $59,680, according to the BLS. Industries that paid zoologists and wildlife scientists the highest annual average salaries included managing firms of companies and enterprises ($74,210), the federal government ($80,710) and engineering and architectural services ($66,440). Ethologist Career Requirements Ethologists must have extensive knowledge in biology, animal sciences, evolution, ecology and genetics. Those who earn a bachelor's degree in one of these fields might find employment as ethology researchers, although the BLS stated that a graduate degree, preferably a doctorate, is usually necessary for biological scientists who want to run their own experiments and research projects.

Additionally, most programs that concentrate on ethological studies are found at the graduate level. Graduate-level coursework related to ethology includes animal behavior, neuroethology, animal social structures and animal communication. Other Skills Ethologists who conduct and participate in research projects need to know how to raise funds, often by attracting investors or applying for research grants. Workers who hold a graduate degree are usually required to publish research results, which can be accomplished by writing a book or publishing articles in academic publications related to ethological studies. Ethologists also need to be comfortable working away from home for extended periods of time, which can include working in secluded locations far away from urban developments. Since most scientists work in teams, ethologists must possess strong communication skills. Sometimes ethologists must explain their research to people outside of their field. Likewise, ethologists work with scientists from several related fields and require a base understanding of how those fields relate to ethology. To stay in touch with colleagues, workers also should be able to use communication technologies, such as e-mail and video communication devices. Ethologists try to understand the reasons for animal behavior through field and laboratory research.

A bachelor's degree may be enough to get a beginning ethologist in the door to assist in research, but for those who aspire to lead their own teams and projects, a graduate degree related to ethology is a wise choice. Job growth in this field is expected to be slow in the coming years, and ethologists need good communication skills, a willingness to travel and the ability to raise research funds through grants or investors. Ethology | Define Ethology at Dictionary.com ethology [ee-thol-uh-jee, ih-thol-] /iˈθɒl ə dʒi, ɪˈθɒl-/ Spell noun 1. the study of animal behavior with emphasis on the behavioral patterns that occur in natural environments. Origin of ethology French 1895-1900 1895-1900; earlier, as the study of relations between an organism and its environment < French éthologie, coined by French zoologist I.

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805-61); see ethos , -logy Related forms [ee-thuh-loj-i-kuh l, eth-uh-] /ˌi θəˈlɒdʒ ɪ kəl, ˌɛθ ə-/ (Show IPA), adjective ethologically, adverb Examples from the Web for ethology Expand British Dictionary definitions for ethology Expand the study of the behaviour of animals in their normal environment Derived Forms ethologist, noun Word Origin C17 (in the obsolete sense: mimicry): via Latin from Greek ēthologia, from ēthos character; current sense, C19 Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Word Origin and History for ethology Expand n.

late 17c., "mimicry," from Latin ethologia, from Greek ethologia, from ethos "character" (see ethos ). As a branch of zoology, from 1897. Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper What does ethology mean? the science of the formation of character, national and collective as well as individual Origin: [Gr. a depicting of character; custom, moral nature + to speak.] Freebase(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Ethology Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, and is a sub-topic of zoology. The focus of ethology is on animal behaviour under natural conditions, as opposed to behaviourism, which focuses on behavioural response studies in a laboratory setting. Many naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour throughout history. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and by Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, joint winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to certain other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolution. Ethologists are typically interested in a behavioural process rather than in a particular animal group, and often study one type of behaviour, such as aggression, in a number of unrelated animals. The desire to understand animals has made ethology a rapidly growing field. Since the turn of the 21st century, many aspects of animal communication, animal emotions, animal culture, learning, and even sexual conduct that experts long thought they understood, have been re-examined, and new conclusions reached. New fields have developed, such as neuroethology. Chambers 20th Century Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Ethology ē-thol′o-ji, n. a discourse on ethics: the science of character.—adjs. Etholog′ic, -al, relating to ethology: treating of morality.—ns. Ethol′ogist, one versed in ethology or ethics; Ē′thos, habitual character and disposition: the quality of a work of art which produces a high moral impression. [Gr.

ēthos, custom, logia, a discourse.] U.S. National Library of Medicine(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Ethology The numerical value of ethology in Chaldean Numerology is: 8 Pythagorean Numerology

Question: What does an ethologist study?
Answer: Animal behaviour