As early as the Paleolithic Age (34000 ~ 10500 years ago), people began to pay attention to the animals around them. With the beginning of animal domestication, human beings also need to understand the life cycle and behavior of animals.
In the early days of civilization, ancient Egyptians began to try to incubate eggs artificially.
Aristotle in ancient Greece (384 ~ 322 BC) began a new era of observing and describing animal behavior.
In his works, he recorded the life history and behavior of 540 kinds of animals, which had a considerable influence on the understanding of life in later generations.
17 and 18 centuries, more and more people studied animal behaviors and began to compare the behaviors of different species and conduct theoretical discussions.
For example, Johunn Pernaller, a German, studied the behavioral differences of different birds, including feeding, social behavior, nesting, territory, seasonal feather color change, migration, singing and brooding. Chorles Gee Lereg of France vividly described the predatory behavior of wolves and foxes and their fear of rabbits, and suggested that animals can live intelligently by relying on their own memories and life experiences.
From 65438 to 0859, the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species had a far-reaching impact on the study of animal behavior.
His book The Origin of Human Beings (187 1) studied and compared human beings with animals and instinctive behaviors.
At the end of 19, people used mazes to study the learning behavior of mice.
C.Lioyd Mun studied the instinct, learning and simulated behavior of chickens.
Many terms in modern behavior, such as behavior and hostile behavior, first appeared in his works.
As early as the first half of19th century, Ye Wei and Saint tyrael argued about the research methods of zoology: the former emphasized laboratory research, while the latter advocated observation under natural conditions.
Under their influence, the study of animal behavior has formed two traditions.
On the one hand, the representatives are mostly physiologists and physiological psychologists.
For example, Pavlov, American E.L. Thorndike and B.F. Skinner.
They have done a lot of research on the learning behavior of dogs, cats and mice in the laboratory.
Classical conditioning and operational conditioning are their famous contributions.
On the other hand, the representative figures are mainly zoologists with natural history tendency, such as Austrian German K.von frisch, Austrian K. Z Lorenz and Dutch British N Timbergen.
Through observation and experiments in the natural environment, they analyze the motivation of behavior, explore the adaptive function of behavior, and try to infer the evolutionary path of behavior.
The 20th century is a century of rapid development and real extension of animal behavior.
Hobhouse found in 190 1 that monkeys and other animals can use some tools (sticks and boxes) to get food.
From 65438 to 0906, zoologist H.S.Jennings made a detailed study of the behavior of protozoa and wrote the book "The Behavior of Protozoa", which is the first book devoted to the study of animal behavior.
Heinroth of Berlin studied many kinds of ducks and geese in detail from 187 1 to 1945, compared their movement modes, anatomical characteristics, social behaviors, singing and reproductive behaviors, and found the imprinting behavior of gray geese after hatching from the incubator.
By the beginning of 2 1 century, his homology theory alone was regarded by many people as one of the symbols of the real birth of ethnology.
Zoologist H.S. Reimarus developed Darwin's thought and formally established comparative behavior, which laid the foundation for modern behavioral biology.
Subsequently, C.L.Mun, W.James and J.Loeb all contributed to the development of behavior in terms of methods and concepts.
From 193 1 to 194 1, the famous European behavioral biologists Ding Bogen and Lorenz have made long-term observations on animals under natural and semi-natural conditions, and published The Behavior of Crows Living in Groups, Friends in the Bird Environment World, The Concept of Instinct, Goose and Duck.
New concepts and new research topics such as display, displacement and ritualization are put forward.
In particular, the word "imprint" put forward by Lorenz perfectly illustrates the combination of innate and acquired behavior.
He has made great contributions to behavioral analysis and behavioral ecology.
The research of animal behavior is developing vigorously, mainly because of the mutual infiltration between animal behavior and many other branches of life science, forming many new research fields, and further expounding the reasons, mechanisms, occurrence or development of animal behavior from different angles.
Evolutionary and adaptive functions.
There are many branches of animal behavior, so it is impossible to discuss them comprehensively here. This paper only focuses on behavioral genetics and behavioral ecology, and makes a brief introduction.
Related books
Behavioral genetics is the genetic basis of studying behavior by genetic methods.
Starting from 1960, Thompson, an American scholar, was the first to summarize relevant information and wrote a book, Behavioral Genetics, thus announcing the birth of this new discipline.
Since then, a large number of related studies have emerged.
10 years later, a professional journal Behavioral Genetics came out.
1967, Benzer was the first to obtain the behavioral mutant of Drosophila by artificial induction and selection, which opened the way for the study of behavioral genetics.
Since then, behavioral mutants have been studied in a large number of studies on flies, nematodes, paramecium, bacteria and other organisms.
On the basis of molecular level analysis, the separation, cloning and transfer of behavioral genes were further studied.
Behavioral genetics has opened up a new world for the study of animal behavior, and it is of great significance to clarify the laws and mechanisms of behavioral genetics.
Behavioral ecology mainly studies the behavior mechanism in ecology, the ecological significance and evolutionary significance of animal behavior, and it is the fastest-growing and most active field of animal behavior in theory and methodology.
Behavioral ecology mainly involves feeding behavioral ecology.
Defense behavioral ecology, reproductive behavioral ecology, social ecology, spatio-temporal behavioral ecology (such as habitat selection, orientation and navigation, nesting and domain phenomena, etc. ) and behavioral ecological prediction.
Among them, outstanding progress has been made in social ecology or sociobiology.
K Lorenz's research on social behavior of birds, N Timbergen's research on human social behavior (1974) and K von Frish's research on social behavior of bees laid the foundation of social biology.
From 65438 to 0975, E.O. Wilson published Sociobiology, which systematically introduced the viewpoint, theoretical system and research methods of this subject.
Sociobiology applies Darwin's concept of natural selection to the study of social behavior, integrates ecology, behavior, genetics and evolution, and puts forward new concepts of internal fitness and kinship selection.
These new concepts have raised the study of social behavior to a new height.
The fascinating prospect in this field is attracting more and more scientists.
In particular, the research on behavioral economics and evolutionary stability countermeasures is showing great vitality.
Although this field is almost blank in China, with the rapid development of this subject, it will certainly arouse great interest in China academic circles.
The research on animal behavior in China is in its infancy, and the content of the research is mainly descriptive. In terms of theoretical research, there is a big gap with foreign countries in both breadth and depth.
So far, there are no special textbooks and periodicals on animal behavior in China.
However, from the published papers and materials, China has made some progress in some areas of animal behavior.