1963, ding bogen published an important paper on the purpose and method of ethics, expounding four basic problems about animal behavior, also known as ding bogen problem. This paper points out that it is necessary to comprehensively understand animal behavior by combining proximate cause analysis and remote cause analysis. Proximity can be regarded as an immediate explanation of a certain behavior, in other words, how an individual conducts a certain behavior. Similar explanations may be at the molecular level or physical functions, such as how visual cells feel light and how metabolic processes occur. Ultimately, it can be seen as an analysis of a certain behavior from a long time scale (evolutionary perspective), such as why an animal evolved a special behavior, in other words, how a certain behavior improved the survival and reproduction of species (why gibbons sing every morning, and what adaptability this singing behavior brought to the population). Today, 50 years later, this idea is still effective and popular for us to study animal behavior. According to Google Academic, the paper has been cited 2940 times so far.
Ding Bogen divided proximate cause and remote cause into four basic problems: survival value, ontogeny, evolution and the cause of behavior. These four questions can be expressed as follows: What is it (function)? How did it develop (develop) in the individual life history? How did it evolve in the evolutionary history of species? How does it work? These four problems are both related and different, and their functions and mechanisms belong to the near cause in a short time scale; Development and evolution are distant causes on a long time scale. Wikipedia combines these four questions according to the tables of proximate cause, remote cause, static state and dynamic state:
As Ding Bogen said in the article 1963 quoted at the beginning of this paper, "a comprehensive and consistent science must pay equal attention to every link and its integration", which is a comprehensive and comprehensive method to explain animal behavior and forms the main framework for studying animal behavior. Why is this framework so important? Because this framework is the basic way for us to understand animal behavior. Just as we know a plant, first of all, we know that a plant is composed of roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits. This is the framework of basic understanding. When we see a plant, we can point out where the root is, where the flower is, what's the difference between this flower and other flowers. When we study the behavior of a wild animal, we first put the research object into these four questions, then list the hypotheses according to the questions, and then test the hypotheses. This method can generally solve many doubts, or avoid detours for a few years.
This question frame can be used in a wide range of environments, such as: Why do some birds peck at red objects instead of other colors? Can red stimulate the visual nerve of chicks? If so, when and how did the red object stimulate the nerve? On the other hand, when analyzing the remote causes, we can ask: What kind of selection pressure caused birds to have a unique reaction to red during the evolution of birds? Food or something?
Or, why do gibbons sing every morning? Why don't you sing in the afternoon? What signal tells gibbons to start singing? In individual development, when and how did singing behavior form, and was it acquired through learning? From the perspective of remote cause, we can ask, what are the differences in the songs of different gibbons? What kind of selection pressure caused this species to start singing?
A comprehensive understanding of the static and dynamic changes of animal behavior, the function and plasticity of behavior, and even many abnormal manifestations is the theoretical basis of biodiversity protection. These theories are an important basis for evaluating the effectiveness of wildlife protection (such as rescue, release, habitat restoration, ex situ conservation, etc.). We should understand how the adaptability of wild animals is affected by human activities from the perspective of evolution and dynamics, in other words, how animals make behavioral changes in habitats affected by human beings to enhance their adaptability. Based on this, we can understand how wild animals adapt to nature and change their behavior. Only in this way can we judge whether our protective measures are effective and need to be adjusted. Urban gardens in Singapore and vertical forests in London are not all efforts made by human beings to rebuild an ideal habitat for human beings and animals in order to protect biodiversity, and the effectiveness of such efforts can only be evaluated objectively, scientifically and effectively through our understanding of basic research on animal behavior.