Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch

Modified: 2023-08-14 (2:48 PM CDST)

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  Lorenz and Tinbergen were ethologists, they along with Karl von Frisch, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1973.
  • Lorenz's early interests lay in the use of behavior as an aid to taxonomy. In particular, he was interested in the taxonomy of ducks (Anatidae).
  • In the 1930s he was able to demonstrate phylectic behavioral differences between duck species.
  • Mating behaviors and displays (e.g., behaviors) were of particular use in this analysis.
  • Lorenz's most famous contribution is probably his description of imprinting, a learning phenomenon seen a few species.
  • Imprinting involves learning that takes place during a critical period, a tiny window of time.
  • Imprinting can only take place within that critical period.
  • Imprinting, thus defined, is not seen in humans.
  • Attachment, a similar phenomenon, does occur in humans.
  • Both Lorenz and Tinbergen developed intimate relationships with the animals they studied, and that contributed to their success.

• Tinbergen's research style and personality complemented Lorenz's.
  • Where Lorenz was garrulous and expansive, Tinbergen was reserved and thoughtful.
  • Tinbergen's research skills lay in his ability to "ask questions of nature."
  • His four questions: immediate causation, development, evolution, and function still form the basis for modern ethological theorizing.
  • His research with sticklebacks, herring gulls, and digger wasps are classic examples of ethology.
• Von Frisch discovered the "dance" of the honeybees. He demonstrated that worker bees returning to the hive could communicate the distance, direction, and type of flower to other worker bees thus recruiting them to exploit that resource and collect nectar with which to make honey.

Comments

Ethology incubated slowly in Europe in the minds of Lorenz, Tinbergen, von Frisch and others. When ethological notions began to percolate across the Atlantic, the effect was predicable. American behavioral psychologists nearly universally rejected ethological ideas and theory. In the ensuing decades, however, the self-correction so often seen in science happened again. Today, ethological notions, refined and revised, form part of any coherent attempt to explain development.