Ethology Flashcards
What is ethology?
Ethology is a branch
of zoology that studies the behaviour of animals, usually with
a scientific focus on behaviour under natural conditions and viewing behaviour as
an evolutionarily adaptive trait. However, ethology can include captive and domestic animals as well.
What are the 3 main ethnologists?
Conrad Lorenz
Charles Darwin
Nikolaas Tinbergen
What did Konrad Lorenz discover?
His ideas contributed to an understanding of how behavioural patterns may be traced to an evolutionary past, and he was also known for his work on the roots of aggression.
In 1935 Lorenz
described learning behaviour in young ducklings and goslings. He observed that at a certain critical stage soon after hatching, they learn to follow real or foster parents. The process, which is called imprinting, involves visual and auditory stimuli from the parent object; these elicit a following response in the young that affects their subsequent adult behaviour.
What did Charles Darwin discover?
In 1872 Charles Darwin issued The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. With this book Darwin founded the study of ethology and conveyance of information.
The idea that the facial muscles of expression in humans were a special endowment, the work contained studies of facial and other types of expression (sounds, erection of hair, etc.) in man and mammals, and their correlation with various emotions such as grief, love, anger, fear and shame.
The results of Darwin’s investigations showed that in many cases expression is not learned but innate, and enabled Darwin to formulate three principles governing the expression of emotions— relief of sensation or desire, antithesis, and reflex action.
What did Nikolass Tinbergen discover?
Tinbergen was a
Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning the organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.
He is regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behaviour.
Why do we study animal behaviour?
Improving Captive Animal Management
Managing Animal Population
Improving Animal Welfare
How does improving captive animal management help with behaviour?
The study of Ethology allows us to assess animal behaviours and use that knowledge to work with the captive animals we keep.
Observing wild behaviours has allowed zoologists to change their care plans in captive environments. This allows us to house and manage the animals more accurately.
How does managing animal populations help with animal behaviour?
Ethology has allowed us to know the breeding habits of different species meaning in both a captive and wild environment we can manage populations.
In a captive environment we need to know the signs and seasons that different animals are ready to breed and take action to manage this. It means for breeding endangered species we can understand the breeding seasons and assist them in continuing the species. But it also means we know when to keep males and females separate if we don’t want them breeding.
This observation of behaviour also allows us to predict wild populations. For example, in the UK we have no natural predators of deer, meaning we must manage the populations through hunting, but we know when this should be done because of the work Ethologists have done.
How does improving animal welfare help with animal behaviour?
Thanks to the years of research into Ethology, we have been able to drastically improve the welfare of the animals we keep in captivity. We now know which species are social and solitary, we understand how intelligent some of these animals are and how that effect their emotions.
We have been able to improve living conditions, diets and enrichment for countless species thanks to the Ethologists who made the initial discoveries.
