ESP Biography

Ethology is a branch of animal behavior that developed in Europe during the early and middle parts of the 20th century, and its basic premise is that behavior can only really be studied, not in the context of experimental studies, but in the natural habitat of an animal. This class will quickly go over the brief history of the development of ethology. There are many interesting and famous studies in this field, such as Lorenz's imprinting ducklings, Tinbergen's gull eggs and von Firsh's waggle of dance bees. However, I will specifically go into two studies on baboons and sunfish and focus on one of the most fundamental mechanisms underlying the whole evolutionary biology field--how do animals recognize their kin? If oxytocin, prolactin, or major histocompatibility rings a bell to you, that's great. If not, that's even better, because those biochem stuff bores me too. We will just go over the cognitive mechanism used by the animals to recognize their kins. This is a very interesting field filled with talented people and hard work, but you may be just like me not a hardcore ethologist. However, as you will see, this field has shredded lights on how human being behave the way they do, which is the stuff that excites me the most.