Conceptual Breakthroughs in Ethology and Animal Behavior

Michael D. Breed

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780128092651
• eBook ISBN:
  9780128095454
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Animal Husbandry
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Conceptual Breakthroughs in Ethology and Animal Behavior highlights, through concise summaries, the most important discoveries and scientific revolutions in animal behavior. These are assessed for their relative impact on the field and their significance to the forward motion of the science of animal behavior. Eighty short essays capture the moment when a new concept emerged or a publication signaled a paradigm shift. How the new understanding came about is explained, and any continuing controversy or scientific conversation on the issue is highlighted. Behavior is a rich and varied field, drawing on genetics, evolution, physiology, and ecology to inform its principles, and this book embraces the wealth of knowledge that comes from the unification of these fields around the study of animals in motion. The chronological organization of the essays makes this an excellent overview of the history of animal behavior, ethology, and behavioral ecology. The work includes such topics as Darwin's role in shaping the study of animal behavior, the logic of animal contests, cognition, empathy in animals, and animal personalities. Succinct accounts of new revelations about behavior through scientific investigation and scrutiny reveal the fascinating story of this field. Similar to Dr. John Avise's Contemporary Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Genetics, the work is structured into vignettes that describe the conceptual revolution and assess the impact of the conceptual change, with a score, which ranges from 1-10, providing an assessment of the impact of the new findings on contemporary science. - Features a lively, brisk writing style and brief entries to enable easy, enjoyable access to this essential information - Includes topics that cover the range of behavioral biology from mechanism to behavioral ecology - Can also be used as supplemental material for an undergraduate animal behavior course, or as the foundational text for an upper level or graduate discussion course in advanced animal behavior

Chapter 1

50,000 Years Before Present

The Dawn of Human Evolution

Abstract

Human understanding of animal behavior is key to our survival and is representative of the fact that all animals evolve to respond to the behavior of other animals. Human interest in animal behavior extends deep into our evolutionary roots.

Keywords

Natural history; evolution; domestication; observation

The Concept

Human understanding of animal behavior is key to our survival and is representative of the fact that all animals evolve to respond to the behavior of other animals. Human interest in animal behavior extends deep into our evolutionary roots.

The Explanation

The human study of animal behavior is not new. For our newly minted human ancestors, who lived roughly 50,000 years ago, understanding and reacting to animal behavior was just as important as it is now. In fact, in terms of immediate survival value, knowing about animal behavior was more important for prehistoric humans than it is for present-day humans. Early humans needed to comprehend the behavior of animals that might eat them, as well as of the animals that they wanted to eat. Modern society does much to insulate most humans from the danger of being eaten by an animal, and most contemporary people understand little of the behavior of the fish, fowl, swine, and cattle that form the basis of part of a human omnivore’s diet.

Of course the necessity for keen observation of animal behavior predated the evolutionary distinction of humans as a species. You can peel back as far as you like in the family tree of animals and the same necessities will have existed for any species that you might choose. What varies among animal species is how much knowledge of potential predators and food items comes as a result of genetically coded information, versus how much is gained via experience, learning, and calculation. Butterflies and moths inherit their knowledge about what plants to eat, while humans learn what to eat via culture and trial and error.

The best prehistoric agriculturalists learned how to use genetics and evolution to modify the behavior of animal species that humans wanted to exploit. Domesticated versions of horses, sheep, goats, swine, cattle, chickens, ducks, and rabbits behave very differently than their wild relatives. Using the same principles of selective breeding, humans domesticated cats and dogs as companion animals.

These humans, who did this work before written language existed, learned how to use genetics and evolution by trial and error. Without knowing about chromosomes, genes, or DNA, they engineered major genetic changes in other species. Knowledge of how and why to control breeding of other species came through millennia of doing science without calling the outcomes scientific.

The formal science of animal behavior came into existence much more recently. The exact divide between careful animal husbandry and science is indistinct. The first approaches to animal behavior that seem scientific to us came from two rather distinct streams of human intellectual development. One was the documentation of the natural world that followed the colonization of much of the globe by European nations. In this book, I highlight the work of the naturalists Alexander von Humboldt, John James Audubon, Alfred Russell Wallace, Charles Darwin, Jean-Henri Fabre, and Thomas Belt, all of whom worked in the 1800s, but they are part of the larger fabric of natural exploration that started with the colonization of the Americas in the 1500s (see Chapter 7: 1800s The Great Explorers). Their observations included the behavior of animals in natural settings.

The other avenue was inquiry into the physiological mechanisms that support animal life. William Harvey’s discovery of how blood circulated in the early 1600s coincided in time with Charles Butler’s (1623; see Chapter 3: 1623 Social Behavior) book on the social behavior of honeybees. Inquiries like Harvey’s and Butler’s led to deeper experimental explorations of physiology and behavior from the mid-1600s through the 1800s, as well as anatomical studies that supported the understanding of physiology. In addition, Leeuwenhoek developed the microscope as an aid in detailed anatomical studies in the later 1600s, a key advance in biology.

Four elements came together in the 20th century to form the modern biological science of animal behavior:

• Experimental approaches to test for causes of biological phenomena.

• Use of statistics to analyze data from experiments.

• Integration of evolutionary theory with natural history observations.

• An understanding of the physiological underpinnings of behavior.

In the 1970s we entered a period of extensive use of mathematical modeling in behavioral studies. This was coupled with the development of sophisticated evolutionary theory. These changes created a renaissance of thought in ethology and behavioral ecology about how evolution has shaped behavior. In a parallel scientific sphere, comparative psychology integrated with neuroscience, giving new insights into the deeper levels of how the brain regulates behavior. Genomics and its numerous “-omic” offspring, including proteomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics, link evolution, which drives changes in the genome, with the neuroscience of behavior.

While these fields have not merged into the grand synthesis once envisioned by Wilson (1975) as the outcome of his sociobiological revolution, the current scientific landscape is rich with opportunities for integrating knowledge from these very diverse scientific fields. There is a tension between the need for scientists to be ever-more specialized in order to master increasingly difficult field-specific techniques and the potential benefits that come from seeing the relationships among seemingly isolated scientific findings from very disparate intellectual disciplines.

Behavior lies at the nexus of an animal’s interaction with its environment. Humans have changed the global environment, particularly since the beginning of the industrial revolution, in an incomprehensibly rapid and astoundingly thorough manner. We have literally left no stone on the planet unturned. If we are to find ways to preserve the global biota into the next century, knowledge of animal behavior at all levels, ranging from field natural history to the genome, will be needed.

Impact: 10

Animal behavior is as important for us as it was for our prehistoric ancestors. The focus of our application of behavioral knowledge has shifted over the millennia from predator avoidance and food discovery, through a phase in which domestication of livestock and companion animals was preeminent, to our current world, in which knowledge of behavior, its evolution, and its regulation, is key to conserving what is left of the natural world.

See also

Chapter 2, 12,000 Years Before Present Domestication; Chapter 6, 1800s Birds in Their Natural Setting; Chapter 7, 1800s The Great Explorers.

References and Suggested Reading

Most of the chapters in this book have more lists of references and reading suggestions. The possibilities for this chapter are immense, and I can suggest a few books that inspired me:

1. Belt, T., 1874. The naturalist in Nicaragua. Available in modern reprints, such as the Leopold Classic Library, 344 pp.

2. Dillard A. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Harper Collins 1974;304.

3. Matthiesen P. Wildlife in America Penquin 1959;336.

4. Schaller G. Stones of Silence: Journeys in the Himalayas Viking 1988;292.

5. Wiener J. The Beak of the Finch Penguin 1995;332.

6. Wilson EO. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1975;720.

Chapter 2

12,000 Years Before Present

Domestication

Abstract

Domestication of animals combines applied animal behavior, behavioral genetics, the principles of evolution, and experimentation through trial and error. Humans have applied the principles of these scientific approaches for millennia, only our expression of this as a science is relatively new.

Keywords

Dogs; domestication; behavioral genetics; human prehistory

The Concept

Domestication of animals combines applied animal behavior, behavioral genetics, the principles of evolution, and experimentation through trial and error. Humans have applied the principles of these scientific approaches for millennia, only our expression of this as a science is relatively new.

The Explanation

The history of the dog tells us a lot about human nature, about how we gain scientific knowledge, and about how humans shape and mold nature to fit their needs. The dog is a deeply human construct, and our efforts have given us both a valued companion and deep cultural knowledge of the power artificial selection. Human endeavor took an animal from nature and made it into an extension of human existence. As pointed out in Chapter 1, 50,000 Years Before Present: The Dawn of Human Evolution, humans are intimately tied with their natural surroundings and it is impossible to set a date for the beginning of our awareness of animal behavior, but certainly by the time of the domestication of the dog humans understood much about shaping behavior. The date of the emergence of dogs as a recognizable derivative of wolves is controversial, but the generally accepted timing is 12,000 to 16,000 years ago (Perri, 2016).

The histories of wolves and humans wind around each other, with the two species having a relationship that goes deeper into history than any written record. Approach and avoidance divides wolves and humans, a gap that is bridged by the dog. Dogs evolved from wolves under human stewardship and are not quite identical to their wolf ancestors, as they have a largely co-dependent relationship with their human allies. Dogs were the first evolutionary playground in which humans worked out the strength of genetic family ties in shaping behavior and how human control of the evolutionary process of domestication could yield behaviorally tractable animals. Long before Darwin had pointed out how natural...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. 50,000 Years Before Present: The Dawn of Human Evolution
• Chapter 2. 12,000 Years Before Present: Domestication
• Chapter 3. 1623 Social Behavior
• Chapter 4. 1700s Classifying Life
• Chapter 5. 1729 Biological Clocks
• Chapter 6. 1800s Birds in Their Natural Setting
• Chapter 7. 1800s The Great Explorers
• Chapter 8. 1859 Darwin and Behavior
• Chapter 9. 1859 Darwin and Social Insects
• Chapter 10. 1882 George Romanes and the Birth of Comparative Psychology
• Chapter 11. 1894 Morgan’s Canon
• Chapter 12. 1914 Sensory Physiology and Behavior
• Chapter 13. 1938 Skinner and Learning
• Chapter 14. 1940 Orientation
• Chapter 15. 1941 Bat Echolocation
• Chapter 16. 1947 The Evolution of Clutch Size
• Chapter 17. 1948 Cognitive Maps
• Chapter 18. 1948 Hormones and Behavior
• Chapter 19. 1948 Information Theory
• Chapter 20. 1953 The Chasm Between Ethology and Comparative Psychology
• Chapter 21. 1954 Life History Phenomena
• Chapter 22. 1954 Zeitgebers (Time-Givers) for Biological Clocks
• Chapter 23. 1956 The Coolidge Effect
• Chapter 24. 1957 Psychophysical Laws
• Chapter 25. 1960 Motivation and Drive
• Chapter 26. 1963 The Four Questions
• Chapter 27. 1964 Dopamine and Reward Reinforcement
• Chapter 28. 1964 Inclusive Fitness and the Evolution of Altruism
• Chapter 29. 1965 Harry Harlow and Social Isolation in Monkeys
• Chapter 30. 1967 Island Biogeography
• Chapter 31. 1968 Tool Use
• Chapter 32. 1969 Territoriality and Habitat Choice
• Chapter 33. 1970 Sperm Competition
• Chapter 34. 1971 Behavioral Genetics
• Chapter 35. 1971 Reciprocal Altruism
• Chapter 36. 1971 Selfish Herds
• Chapter 37. 1973 Episodic Memory
• Chapter 38. 1973 Game Theory
• Chapter 39. 1973 The Many Eyes Hypothesis
• Chapter 40. 1973 The Red Queen
• Chapter 41. 1973 Animal Conflict
• Chapter 42. 1974 Caenorhabditis elegans Behavioral Genetics
• Chapter 43. 1974 Standardizing Behavioral Observation Methods
• Chapter 44. 1974 Parent–Offspring Conflict
• Chapter 45. 1975 Group Selection
• Chapter 46. 1975 Sociobiology
• Chapter 47. 1975 The Handicap Principle
• Chapter 48. 1976 Marginal Value Theorem
• Chapter 49. 1977 Self-medication
• Chapter 50. 1977 The Evolution of Mating Systems
• Chapter 51. 1978 Animal Models for Depression
• Chapter 52. 1978 Theory of Mind
• Chapter 53. 1980 Dispersal
• Chapter 54. 1980 Semantic Communication
• Chapter 55. 1980 The Risk Paradigm
• Chapter 56. 1981 Prisoner’s Dilemma
• Chapter 57. 1981 Producers and Scroungers
• Chapter 58. 1982 The Hamilton–Zuk Hypothesis
• Chapter 59. 1982 The Hippocampus and Navigation
• Chapter 60. 1983 Reproductive Skew
• Chapter 61. 1985 An Animal Model for Anxiety
• Chapter 62. 1988 Brood Parasitism
• Chapter 63. 1990 Fear
• Chapter 64. 1990 The Challenge Hypothesis
• Chapter 65. 1991 Pain in Animals
• Chapter 66. 1991 Receiver Psychology
• Chapter 67. 1992 Working Memory
• Chapter 68. 1994 Ecosystem Engineers
• Chapter 69. 1996 Conservation Behavior
• Chapter 70. 1996 The Molecular Basis of Learning
• Chapter 71. 1998 Self-Organization of Social Systems
• Chapter 72. 1998 Gaze Following
• Chapter 73. 1999 Multimodal Communication
• Chapter 74. 2000 Emotion and the Brain
• Chapter 75. 2000 Social Amoebas and Their Genomes
• Chapter 76. 2002 Social Networks
• Chapter 77. 2004 Behavioral Syndromes—Personality in Animals
• Chapter 78. 2004 Maternal Epigenetics
• Chapter 79. 2004 Public and Private Information
• Chapter 80. 2014 Keystone Individuals
• Index