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90-397: Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies the behaviour of non-human animals . It has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles O. Whitman , Oskar Heinroth , and Wallace Craig . The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with

180-567: A choice, the chimps preferred to imitate the actions of the higher-ranking elder chimpanzee as opposed to the lower-ranking young chimpanzee. Animals can learn using observational learning but without the process of imitation. One way is stimulus enhancement in which individuals become interested in an object as the result of observing others interacting with the object. Increased interest in an object can result in object manipulation which allows for new object-related behaviours by trial-and-error learning. Haggerty (1909) devised an experiment in which

270-516: A companion ant to a source of food. It has been suggested that the pupil ant is able to learn this route to obtain food in the future or teach the route to other ants. This behaviour of teaching is also exemplified by crows, specifically New Caledonian crows . The adults (whether individual or in families) teach their young adolescent offspring how to construct and utilize tools. For example, Pandanus branches are used to extract insects and other larvae from holes within trees. Individual reproduction

360-557: A course on a subject that I do not at all master." Trivers has had a contentious few years at Rutgers. Trivers is among the most influential evolutionary theorists alive today. Steven Pinker considers Trivers to be "one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought", who has: ...inspired an astonishing amount of research and commentary in psychology and biology—the fields of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, Darwinian social science, and behavioral ecology are in large part attempt to test and flesh out Trivers's ideas. It

450-609: A laboratory setting. Ethologists have been particularly concerned with the evolution of behavior and the understanding of behavior in terms of the theory of natural selection . In one sense, the first modern ethologist was Charles Darwin , whose book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , influenced many future ethologists. A subfield of ethology is behavioral ecology which attempts to answer Nikolaas Tinbergen 's four questions with regard to animal behavior: what are

540-410: A monkey climbed up the side of a cage, placed its arm into a wooden chute, and pulled a rope in the chute to release food. Another monkey was provided an opportunity to obtain the food after watching a monkey go through this process on four occasions. The monkey performed a different method and finally succeeded after trial-and-error. In local enhancement, a demonstrator attracts an observer's attention to

630-413: A new footing, by explaining the processes by which it can occur, and providing observational evidence that it had done so. Darwin's theory was rapidly accepted by the scientific community and soon became a central axiom of the rapidly developing science of biology. The basis for modern genetics began with the work of Gregor Mendel on peas in 1865, although the significance of his work was not realized at

720-406: A new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. Having previously been the realm of gentlemen naturalists, over the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, zoology became an increasingly professional scientific discipline . Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography, laying

810-420: A particular location. Local enhancement has been observed to transmit foraging information among birds, rats and pigs. The stingless bee ( Trigona corvina ) uses local enhancement to locate other members of their colony and food resources. A well-documented example of social transmission of a behaviour occurred in a group of macaques on Hachijojima Island, Japan. The macaques lived in the inland forest until

900-709: A process involving the union of a male and female haploid gamete , each gamete formed by meiosis . Ordinarily, gametes produced by separate individuals unite by a process of fertilization to form a diploid zygote that can then develop into a genetically unique individual progeny. However, some animals are also capable, as an alternative reproductive process, to reproduce parthenogenetically. Parthenogenesis has been described in snakes and lizards (see Misplaced Pages Parthenogenesis in squamates ), in amphibians (see Misplaced Pages Parthenogenesis in amphibians ) and in numerous other species (see Misplaced Pages Parthenogenesis ). Generally, meiosis in parthanogenetically reproducing animals occurs by

990-546: A reading course with Trivers as part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz . Trivers and Newton became close friends: Newton was godfather to one of Trivers's daughters. Trivers joined the Black Panther Party in 1979. Trivers and Newton published an analysis of the role of self-deception by the flight crew in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 . Trivers was "ex-communicated" from

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1080-415: A similar process to that in sexually reproducing animals, but the diploid zygote nucleus is generated by the union of two haploid genomes from the same individual rather than from different individuals. Robert Trivers Trivers studied evolutionary theory with Ernst Mayr and William Drury at Harvard from 1968 to 1972, when he earned his PhD in biology . At Harvard he published a series of some of

1170-506: A sort of symbiosis among individuals of the same species: a society is composed of a group of individuals belonging to the same species living within well-defined rules on food management, role assignments and reciprocal dependence. When biologists interested in evolution theory first started examining social behaviour, some apparently unanswerable questions arose, such as how the birth of sterile castes , like in bees , could be explained through an evolving mechanism that emphasizes

1260-439: A species under specified circumstances. Their starting point for studying the behaviour of a new species was to construct an ethogram , a description of the main types of behaviour with their frequencies of occurrence. This provided an objective, cumulative database of behaviour. Due to the work of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen , ethology developed strongly in continental Europe during the years prior to World War II . After

1350-776: A substantial rapprochement with comparative psychology has occurred, so the modern scientific study of behaviour offers a spectrum of approaches. In 2020, Tobias Starzak and Albert Newen from the Institute of Philosophy II at the Ruhr University Bochum postulated that animals may have beliefs. Behaviour is determined by three major factors, namely inborn instincts , learning , and environmental factors . The latter include abiotic and biotic factors. Abiotic factors such as temperature or light conditions have dramatic effects on animals, especially if they are ectothermic or nocturnal . Biotic factors include members of

1440-458: Is a form of scientific taxonomy . Modern biological classification has its root in the work of Carl Linnaeus , who grouped species according to shared physical characteristics. These groupings have since been revised to improve consistency with the Darwinian principle of common descent . Molecular phylogenetics , which uses nucleic acid sequence as data, has driven many recent revisions and

1530-665: Is administered by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature . A merging draft, BioCode, was published in 1997 in an attempt to standardize nomenclature, but has yet to be formally adopted. Vertebrate zoology is the biological discipline that consists of the study of vertebrate animals, that is animals with a backbone , such as fish , amphibians , reptiles , birds and mammals . The various taxonomically oriented disciplines i.e. mammalogy , biological anthropology , herpetology , ornithology , and ichthyology seek to identify and classify species and study

1620-521: Is an increased ability to forage for food. Group members may exchange information about food sources, facilitating the process of resource location . Honeybees are a notable example of this, using the waggle dance to communicate the location of flowers to the rest of their hive. Predators also receive benefits from hunting in groups , through using better strategies and being able to take down larger prey. Some disadvantages accompany living in groups. Living in close proximity to other animals can facilitate

1710-480: Is an integrative field of study, uniting concepts and information from evolutionary biology , taxonomy , ecology , physical geography , geology , paleontology and climatology . The origin of this field of study is widely accredited to Alfred Russel Wallace , a British biologist who had some of his work jointly published with Charles Darwin . Molecular biology studies the common genetic and developmental mechanisms of animals and plants, attempting to answer

1800-402: Is being studied. For example, what is learned about the physiology of yeast cells can also apply to human cells. The field of animal physiology extends the tools and methods of human physiology to non-human species. Physiology studies how, for example, the nervous , immune , endocrine , respiratory , and circulatory systems function and interact. Developmental biology is the study of

1890-611: Is currently a Rutgers University notable faculty member. In the 2008–09 academic year, he was a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study . Trivers was awarded the 2007 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences for "his fundamental analysis of social evolution, conflict and cooperation". Trivers met Huey P. Newton , Chairman of the Black Panther Party , in 1978 when Newton applied while in prison to do

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1980-406: Is done on both the microscopic and molecular levels for single-celled organisms such as bacteria as well as the specialized cells in multicellular organisms such as humans . Understanding the structure and function of cells is fundamental to all of the biological sciences. The similarities and differences between cell types are particularly relevant to molecular biology. Anatomy considers

2070-443: Is likely to continue to do so. Biological classification belongs to the science of zoological systematics . Many scientists now consider the five-kingdom system outdated. Modern alternative classification systems generally start with the three-domain system : Archaea (originally Archaebacteria); Bacteria (originally Eubacteria); Eukaryota (including protists , fungi , plants , and animals ) These domains reflect whether

2160-522: Is no coincidence that E. O. Wilson 's Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins ' The Selfish Gene were published in 1975 and 1976 respectively, just a few years after Trivers's seminal papers. Both bestselling authors openly acknowledged that they were popularizing Trivers's ideas and the research they spawned. Likewise for the much-talked-about books on evolutionary psychology in the 1990s— The Adapted Mind , The Red Queen , Born to Rebel , The Origins of Virtue , The Moral Animal , and my own How

2250-545: Is one of the primary branches of biology . The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον , zōion ('animal'), and λόγος , logos ('knowledge', 'study'). Although humans have always been interested in the natural history of the animals they saw around them, and used this knowledge to domesticate certain species, the formal study of zoology can be said to have originated with Aristotle . He viewed animals as living organisms, studied their structure and development, and considered their adaptations to their surroundings and

2340-415: Is partly based on paleontology , which uses the fossil record to answer questions about the mode and tempo of evolution, and partly on the developments in areas such as population genetics and evolutionary theory. Following the development of DNA fingerprinting techniques in the late 20th century, the application of these techniques in zoology has increased the understanding of animal populations. In

2430-406: Is quantitative, and recently a significant amount of work has been done using computer science techniques such as bioinformatics and computational biology . Molecular genetics , the study of gene structure and function, has been among the most prominent sub-fields of molecular biology since the early 2000s. Other branches of biology are informed by molecular biology, by either directly studying

2520-703: Is reflected in zoology by the presence of animals in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Although the concept of zoology as a single coherent field arose much later, the zoological sciences emerged from natural history reaching back to the biological works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world . In the fourth century BC, Aristotle looked at animals as living organisms, studying their structure, development and vital phenomena. He divided them into two groups: animals with blood, equivalent to our concept of vertebrates , and animals without blood, invertebrates . He spent two years on Lesbos , observing and describing

2610-564: Is the genus, and sapiens the specific epithet, both of them combined make up the species name. When writing the scientific name of an organism, it is proper to capitalize the first letter in the genus and put all of the specific epithet in lowercase. Additionally, the entire term may be italicized or underlined. The dominant classification system is called the Linnaean taxonomy . It includes ranks and binomial nomenclature . The classification, taxonomy , and nomenclature of zoological organisms

2700-488: Is the most important phase in the proliferation of individuals or genes within a species: for this reason, there exist complex mating rituals , which can be very complex even if they are often regarded as fixed action patterns. The stickleback 's complex mating ritual, studied by Tinbergen, is regarded as a notable example. Often in social life , animals fight for the right to reproduce, as well as social supremacy. A common example of fighting for social and sexual supremacy

2790-446: Is the so-called pecking order among poultry . Every time a group of poultry cohabitate for a certain time length, they establish a pecking order. In these groups, one chicken dominates the others and can peck without being pecked. A second chicken can peck all the others except the first, and so on. Chickens higher in the pecking order may at times be distinguished by their healthier appearance when compared to lower level chickens. While

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2880-614: Is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. Evolutionary research is concerned with the origin and descent of species , as well as their change over time, and includes scientists from many taxonomically oriented disciplines. For example, it generally involves scientists who have special training in particular organisms such as mammalogy , ornithology , herpetology , or entomology , but use those organisms as systems to answer general questions about evolution. Evolutionary biology

2970-569: The International Society for Human Ethology was founded along with its journal, Human Ethology . In 1972, the English ethologist John H. Crook distinguished comparative ethology from social ethology, and argued that much of the ethology that had existed so far was really comparative ethology—examining animals as individuals—whereas, in the future, ethologists would need to concentrate on the behaviour of social groups of animals and

3060-545: The anatomy of different groups. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny (the evolution of species). Physiology studies the mechanical, physical, and biochemical processes of living organisms by attempting to understand how all of the structures function as a whole. The theme of "structure to function" is central to biology. Physiological studies have traditionally been divided into plant physiology and animal physiology , but some principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism

3150-410: The gene-centred view of evolution . One advantage of group living is decreased predation. If the number of predator attacks stays the same despite increasing prey group size, each prey has a reduced risk of predator attacks through the dilution effect. Further, according to the selfish herd theory , the fitness benefits associated with group living vary depending on the location of an individual within

3240-554: The proximate causes of the behavior, the developmental history of the organism, the survival value and phylogeny of the behavior? Another area of study is animal cognition , which uses laboratory experiments and carefully controlled field studies to investigate an animal's intelligence and learning. Biogeography studies the spatial distribution of organisms on the Earth , focusing on topics like dispersal and migration , plate tectonics , climate change , and cladistics . It

3330-399: The taxonomist . Originally it was thought that species were immutable, but with the arrival of Darwin's theory of evolution, the field of cladistics came into being, studying the relationships between the different groups or clades . Systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, the evolutionary history of a group is known as its phylogeny , and the relationship between

3420-552: The 16th century. During the Renaissance and early modern period, zoological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey , who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology , and naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus , Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , and Buffon who began to classify

3510-462: The 1960s, when a group of researchers started giving them potatoes on the beach: soon, they started venturing onto the beach, picking the potatoes from the sand, and cleaning and eating them. About one year later, an individual was observed bringing a potato to the sea, putting it into the water with one hand, and cleaning it with the other. This behaviour was soon expressed by the individuals living in contact with her; when they gave birth, this behaviour

3600-470: The 1980s, developmental biology re-entered evolutionary biology from its initial exclusion from the modern synthesis through the study of evolutionary developmental biology . Related fields often considered part of evolutionary biology are phylogenetics , systematics , and taxonomy . Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior under natural conditions, as opposed to behaviorism , which focuses on behavioral response studies in

3690-463: The Mind Works . Each of these books is based in large part on Trivers's ideas and the explosion of research they inspired, involving dozens of animal species, mathematical and computer modeling, and human social and cognitive psychology. Trivers has two Jamaican ex-wives, five children, and eight grandchildren as of 2016. Trivers believes that girls mature earlier than in the past. He writes “By

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3780-536: The Panthers by Newton in 1982 for "his own good." Trivers wrote the original foreword to Richard Dawkins ' book The Selfish Gene , in which Trivers first proposed his adaptive theory of self-deception. In the 2006 anniversary edition of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins wrote a new introduction in which he stated This edition does, however—and it is a source of particular joy to me—restore the original Foreword by Robert Trivers. I have mentioned Bill Hamilton as one of

3870-535: The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov , who observed that dogs trained to associate food with the ringing of a bell would salivate on hearing the bell. Imprinting enables the young to discriminate the members of their own species, vital for reproductive success. This important type of learning only takes place in a very limited period of time. Konrad Lorenz observed that the young of birds such as geese and chickens followed their mothers spontaneously from almost

3960-421: The advantage for all members, groups may continue to increase in size until it is more advantageous to remain alone than to join an overly full group. Tinbergen argued that ethology needed to include four kinds of explanation in any instance of behaviour: These explanations are complementary rather than mutually exclusive—all instances of behaviour require an explanation at each of these four levels. For example,

4050-449: The animals and plants, considering the adaptations of different organisms and the function of their parts. Four hundred years later, Roman physician Galen dissected animals to study their anatomy and the function of the different parts, because the dissection of human cadavers was prohibited at the time. This resulted in some of his conclusions being false, but for many centuries it was considered heretical to challenge any of his views, so

4140-427: The cells have nuclei or not, as well as differences in the chemical composition of the cell exteriors. Further, each kingdom is broken down recursively until each species is separately classified. The order is: Domain ; kingdom ; phylum ; class ; order ; family ; genus ; species . The scientific name of an organism is generated from its genus and species. For example, humans are listed as Homo sapiens . Homo

4230-434: The clades can be shown diagrammatically in a cladogram . Although someone who made a scientific study of animals would historically have described themselves as a zoologist, the term has come to refer to those who deal with individual animals, with others describing themselves more specifically as physiologists, ethologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists, pharmacologists, endocrinologists or parasitologists. Although

4320-418: The company of researchers who imitated them to that of researchers who did not. The monkeys not only spent more time with their imitators but also preferred to engage in a simple task with them even when provided with the option of performing the same task with a non-imitator. Imitation has been observed in recent research on chimpanzees; not only did these chimps copy the actions of another individual, when given

4410-517: The determination of the double helical structure of the DNA molecule by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, the realm of molecular biology opened up, leading to advances in cell biology , developmental biology and molecular genetics . The study of systematics was transformed as DNA sequencing elucidated the degrees of affinity between different organisms. Zoology is the branch of science dealing with animals . A species can be defined as

4500-647: The discovery of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, the realm of molecular biology opened up, leading to advances in cell biology , developmental biology and molecular genetics . The history of zoology traces the study of the animal kingdom from ancient to modern times. Prehistoric people needed to study the animals and plants in their environment to exploit them and survive. Cave paintings, engravings and sculptures in France dating back 15,000 years show bison, horses, and deer in carefully rendered detail. Similar images from other parts of

4590-456: The diversity of life and the fossil record , as well as studying the development and behavior of organisms. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek did pioneering work in microscopy and revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms , laying the groundwork for cell theory . van Leeuwenhoek's observations were endorsed by Robert Hooke ; all living organisms were composed of one or more cells and could not generate spontaneously. Cell theory provided

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4680-449: The first day after they were hatched, and he discovered that this response could be imitated by an arbitrary stimulus if the eggs were incubated artificially and the stimulus were presented during a critical period that continued for a few days after hatching. Imitation is an advanced behavior whereby an animal observes and exactly replicates the behavior of another. The National Institutes of Health reported that capuchin monkeys preferred

4770-404: The forms of macroscopic structures such as organs and organ systems. It focuses on how organs and organ systems work together in the bodies of humans and other animals, in addition to how they work independently. Anatomy and cell biology are two studies that are closely related, and can be categorized under "structural" studies. Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in

4860-431: The foundations for biogeography , ecology and ethology . Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species . These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology , were synthesized in the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution by natural selection ; in this Darwin placed the theory of organic evolution on

4950-400: The four intellectual heroes of the book. Bob Trivers is another. His ideas dominate large parts of Chapters 9, 10 and 12, and the whole of Chapter 8. Not only is his Foreword a beautifully crafted introduction to the book: unusually, he chose the medium to announce to the world a brilliant new idea, his theory of the evolution of self-deception. I am most grateful to him for giving permission for

5040-467: The function of eating is to acquire nutrients (which ultimately aids survival and reproduction), but the immediate cause of eating is hunger (causation). Hunger and eating are evolutionarily ancient and are found in many species (evolutionary history), and develop early within an organism's lifespan (development). It is easy to confuse such questions—for example, to argue that people eat because they are hungry and not to acquire nutrients—without realizing that

5130-502: The function of their parts. Modern zoology has its origins during the Renaissance and early modern period, with Carl Linnaeus , Antonie van Leeuwenhoek , Robert Hooke , Charles Darwin , Gregor Mendel and many others. The study of animals has largely moved on to deal with form and function, adaptations, relationships between groups, behaviour and ecology. Zoology has increasingly been subdivided into disciplines such as classification , physiology , biochemistry and evolution . With

5220-463: The group to quickly scramble down burrows. When prairie dog towns are located near trails used by humans, giving alarm calls every time a person walks by is expensive in terms of time and energy. Habituation to humans is therefore an important behavior in this context. Associative learning in animal behaviour is any learning process in which a new response becomes associated with a particular stimulus. The first studies of associative learning were made by

5310-399: The group. The theory suggests that conspecifics positioned at the centre of a group will reduce the likelihood predations while those at the periphery will become more vulnerable to attack. In groups, prey can also actively reduce their predation risk through more effective defence tactics, or through earlier detection of predators through increased vigilance. Another advantage of group living

5400-488: The intensity of selection in fruit flies were based on their ability to obtain mates. The primary insight of Trivers was that the key variable underlying the evolution of sex differences across species was relative parental investment in offspring. Trivers was on the faculty at Harvard University from 1973 to 1978, and then moved to the University of California, Santa Cruz where he was a faculty member 1978 to 1994. He

5490-476: The interactions of molecules in their own right such as in cell biology and developmental biology , or indirectly, where molecular techniques are used to infer historical attributes of populations or species , as in fields in evolutionary biology such as population genetics and phylogenetics . There is also a long tradition of studying biomolecules "from the ground up", or molecularly, in biophysics . Animals generally reproduce by sexual reproduction ,

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5580-404: The largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sex can produce fertile offspring; about 1.5 million species of animal have been described and it has been estimated that as many as 8 million animal species may exist. An early necessity was to identify the organisms and group them according to their characteristics, differences and relationships, and this is the field of

5670-498: The most influential and highly cited papers in evolutionary biology. His first major paper as a graduate student was "The evolution of reciprocal altruism", published in 1971. In this paper Trivers offers a solution to the longstanding problem of cooperation among unrelated individuals and by doing so overcame a crucial problem for how to police the system by proposing how natural selection could evolve ways to detect cheaters. His next major work, "Parental investment and sexual selection",

5760-413: The name of Konrad Lorenz though probably due more to his teacher, Oskar Heinroth , was the identification of fixed action patterns . Lorenz popularized these as instinctive responses that would occur reliably in the presence of identifiable stimuli called sign stimuli or "releasing stimuli". Fixed action patterns are now considered to be instinctive behavioural sequences that are relatively invariant within

5850-489: The original Foreword to grace this Anniversary Edition. In 2015, Rutgers University suspended Trivers with pay as part of an ongoing dispute regarding a class on "Human Aggression" the Anthropology department had assigned to him. Trivers said that he was told to teach the class even though he objected that he knew nothing about the specific subject. In his first lecture, Trivers told the class he would do his best to learn

5940-434: The pecking order is establishing, frequent and violent fights can happen, but once established, it is broken only when other individuals enter the group, in which case the pecking order re-establishes from scratch. Several animal species, including humans, tend to live in groups. Group size is a major aspect of their social environment. Social life is probably a complex and effective survival strategy. It may be regarded as

6030-517: The processes by which animals and plants reproduce and grow. The discipline includes the study of embryonic development , cellular differentiation , regeneration , asexual and sexual reproduction , metamorphosis , and the growth and differentiation of stem cells in the adult organism. Development of both animals and plants is further considered in the articles on evolution , population genetics , heredity , genetic variability , Mendelian inheritance , and reproduction . Evolutionary biology

6120-493: The questions regarding the mechanisms of genetic inheritance and the structure of the gene . In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA and the interactions within the molecule, and this publication jump-started research into molecular biology and increased interest in the subject. While researchers practice techniques specific to molecular biology, it is common to combine these with methods from genetics and biochemistry . Much of molecular biology

6210-479: The reason people experience hunger is because it causes them to acquire nutrients. Zoology Zoology ( UK : / z u ˈ ɒ l ə dʒ i / zoo- OL -ə-jee , US : / z oʊ ˈ ɒ l ə dʒ i / zoh- OL -ə-jee ) is the scientific study of animals . Its studies include the structure , embryology , classification , habits , and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct , and how they interact with their ecosystems . Zoology

6300-649: The reproductive success of as many individuals as possible, or why, amongst animals living in small groups like squirrels , an individual would risk its own life to save the rest of the group. These behaviours may be examples of altruism . Not all behaviours are altruistic, as indicated by the table below. For example, revengeful behaviour was at one point claimed to have been observed exclusively in Homo sapiens . However, other species have been reported to be vengeful including chimpanzees, as well as anecdotal reports of vengeful camels. Altruistic behaviour has been explained by

6390-494: The results of his own investigations. His general approach was surprisingly modern, and he wrote, "For it is [the task] of natural science not simply to accept what we are told but to inquire into the causes of natural things." An early pioneer was Conrad Gessner , whose monumental 4,500-page encyclopedia of animals, Historia animalium , was published in four volumes between 1551 and 1558. In Europe, Galen's work on anatomy remained largely unsurpassed and unchallenged up until

6480-503: The rise of the germ theory of disease , though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery. In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel's work led to the rapid development of genetics , and by the 1930s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the modern synthesis created evolutionary biology . Research in cell biology is interconnected to other fields such as genetics, biochemistry , medical microbiology , immunology , and cytochemistry . With

6570-455: The same species (e.g. sexual behavior), predators (fight or flight), or parasites and diseases . Webster's Dictionary defines instinct as "A largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason". This covers fixed action patterns like beak movements of bird chicks, and the waggle dance of honeybees. An important development, associated with

6660-442: The shore and encouraging them to attack the prey. Because the mother orca is altering her behaviour to help her offspring learn to catch prey, this is evidence of teaching. Teaching is not limited to mammals. Many insects, for example, have been observed demonstrating various forms of teaching to obtain food. Ants , for example, will guide each other to food sources through a process called " tandem running ," in which an ant will guide

6750-456: The social structure within them. E. O. Wilson 's book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis appeared in 1975, and since that time, the study of behaviour has been much more concerned with social aspects. It has been driven by the Darwinism associated with Wilson, Robert Trivers , and W. D. Hamilton . The related development of behavioural ecology has helped transform ethology. Furthermore,

6840-433: The species and that almost inevitably run to completion. One example of a releaser is the beak movements of many bird species performed by newly hatched chicks, which stimulates the mother to regurgitate food for her offspring. Other examples are the classic studies by Tinbergen on the egg-retrieval behaviour and the effects of a " supernormal stimulus " on the behaviour of graylag geese . One investigation of this kind

6930-499: The structures and mechanisms specific to those groups. The rest of the animal kingdom is dealt with by invertebrate zoology , a vast and very diverse group of animals that includes sponges , echinoderms , tunicates , worms , molluscs , arthropods and many other phyla , but single-celled organisms or protists are not usually included. Cell biology studies the structural and physiological properties of cells , including their behavior , interactions, and environment . This

7020-529: The study of anatomy stultified. During the post-classical era , Middle Eastern science and medicine was the most advanced in the world, integrating concepts from Ancient Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia and Persia as well as the ancient Indian tradition of Ayurveda , while making numerous advances and innovations. In the 13th century, Albertus Magnus produced commentaries and paraphrases of all Aristotle's works; his books on topics like botany , zoology, and minerals included information from ancient sources, but also

7110-569: The study of animal life is ancient, its scientific incarnation is relatively modern. This mirrors the transition from natural history to biology at the start of the 19th century. Since Hunter and Cuvier , comparative anatomical study has been associated with morphography , shaping the modern areas of zoological investigation: anatomy , physiology , histology , embryology , teratology and ethology . Modern zoology first arose in German and British universities. In Britain, Thomas Henry Huxley

7200-466: The subject along with them and with the help of guest lecturers. Rutgers suspended Trivers for involving the students in the controversy. Trivers told the Rutgers campus newsletter that Rutgers's officials refused to meet with him. Trivers also told the student paper: "You would think the university would show a little respect for my teaching abilities on subjects that I know about and not force me to teach

7290-433: The time. Darwin gave a new direction to morphology and physiology , by uniting them in a common biological theory: the theory of organic evolution. The result was a reconstruction of the classification of animals upon a genealogical basis, fresh investigation of the development of animals, and early attempts to determine their genetic relationships. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and

7380-456: The transmission of parasites and disease, and groups that are too large may also experience greater competition for resources and mates. Theoretically, social animals should have optimal group sizes that maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of group living. However, in nature, most groups are stable at slightly larger than optimal sizes. Because it generally benefits an individual to join an optimally-sized group, despite slightly decreasing

7470-769: The war, Tinbergen moved to the University of Oxford , and ethology became stronger in the UK , with the additional influence of William Thorpe , Robert Hinde , and Patrick Bateson at the University of Cambridge . Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for their work of developing ethology. Ethology is now a well-recognized scientific discipline, with its own journals such as Animal Behaviour , Applied Animal Behaviour Science , Animal Cognition , Behaviour , Behavioral Ecology and Ethology . In 1972,

7560-641: The work of the Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and the Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch , the three winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine . Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to neuroanatomy , ecology , and evolutionary biology . The modern term ethology derives from the Greek language : ἦθος , ethos meaning "character" and -λογία , -logia meaning "the study of". The term

7650-494: The world illustrated mostly the animals hunted for food and the savage animals. The Neolithic Revolution , which is characterized by the domestication of animals , continued throughout Antiquity. Ancient knowledge of wildlife is illustrated by the realistic depictions of wild and domestic animals in the Near East, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, including husbandry practices and techniques, hunting and fishing. The invention of writing

7740-502: Was a prominent figure. His ideas were centered on the morphology of animals. Many consider him the greatest comparative anatomist of the latter half of the 19th century. Similar to Hunter , his courses were composed of lectures and laboratory practical classes in contrast to the previous format of lectures only. Scientific classification in zoology , is a method by which zoologists group and categorize organisms by biological type , such as genus or species . Biological classification

7830-447: Was also expressed by their young—a form of social transmission. Teaching is a highly specialized aspect of learning in which the "teacher" (demonstrator) adjusts their behaviour to increase the probability of the "pupil" (observer) achieving the desired end-result of the behaviour. For example, orcas are known to intentionally beach themselves to catch pinniped prey. Mother orcas teach their young to catch pinnipeds by pushing them onto

7920-905: Was first popularized by the American entomologist William Morton Wheeler in 1902. Ethologists have been concerned particularly with the evolution of behaviour and its understanding in terms of natural selection . In one sense, the first modern ethologist was Charles Darwin , whose 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals influenced many ethologists. He pursued his interest in behaviour by encouraging his protégé George Romanes , who investigated animal learning and intelligence using an anthropomorphic method, anecdotal cognitivism , that did not gain scientific support. Other early ethologists, such as Eugène Marais , Charles O. Whitman , Oskar Heinroth , Wallace Craig and Julian Huxley , instead concentrated on behaviours that can be called instinctive in that they occur in all members of

8010-581: Was published the following year. Here Trivers proposed a general framework for understanding sexual selection that had eluded evolutionary thinkers since Charles Darwin . Arguably his most important paper, it arose from watching male and female pigeons out the window of his third floor apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts , and by his reading a 1948 paper by Angus Bateman (“Intra-sexual selection in Drosophila ”) which demonstrated that sex differences in

8100-477: Was the study of the waggle dance ("dance language") in bee communication by Karl von Frisch . Habituation is a simple form of learning and occurs in many animal taxa. It is the process whereby an animal ceases responding to a stimulus. Often, the response is an innate behavior. Essentially, the animal learns not to respond to irrelevant stimuli. For example, prairie dogs ( Cynomys ludovicianus ) give alarm calls when predators approach, causing all individuals in

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