How Animals Behave
Tim Halliday(Author)
Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Publisher)
Book
Hardback
196 pages
978-0-297-84288-0 (ISBN)
Description
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.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Orion Publishing Co
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
300 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-297-84288-0 (9780297842880)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Tim Halliday has worked for more than twenty years on the reproductive biology and conservation of European newts, frogs and toads. He has written and edited numerous books and papers and is currently Professor of Biology at the Open University and International Director of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force.