How Animals Behave

Why is animal behaviour worthy of serious scientific study? What contribution has the study of animal behaviour made to our understanding of animals, including humans? These are the questions central to HOW ANIMALS BEHAVE. The author, Tim Halliday, takes as his starting point the foundational work of Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. Their insistence on the use of specific questioning (development, function and evolutionary history) elevated the study of animal behaviour from the status of natural history to a scientific discipline in its own right, complete with a unique set of concepts and theories. Halliday applies these methods first to the individual animal, examining how it copes with its daily life and how its behaviour changes over its lifetime. He then shifts his emphasis to social interactions of groups of animals, ranging from communication to sexual relationships. In analysing complex patterns of social behaviour, however, he argues that it is important never to lose sight of the individual animal and ends by considering what, if anything, can be learnt about human behaviour from the study of fauna great and small.