Ethology - Social Ethology and Recent Developments

Social Ethology and Recent Developments

In 1970, the English ethologist John H. Crook published an important paper in which he distinguished comparative ethology from social ethology, and argued that much of the ethology that had existed so far was really comparative ethology—examining animals as individuals—whereas, in the future, ethologists would need to concentrate on the behaviour of social groups of animals and the social structure within them.

Also in 1970, Robert Ardrey's book The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder was published. The book and study investigated animal behaviour and then compared human behaviour to it as a similar phenomenon.

E. O. Wilson's book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis appeared in 1975, and since that time, the study of behaviour has been much more concerned with social aspects. It has also been driven by the stronger, but more sophisticated, Darwinism associated with Wilson, Robert Trivers, and William Hamilton. The related development of behavioural ecology has also helped transform ethology. Furthermore, a substantial reapprochement with comparative psychology has occurred, so the modern scientific study of behaviour offers a more or less seamless spectrum of approaches: from animal cognition to more traditional comparative psychology, ethology, sociobiology, and behavioural ecology. Sociobiology has more recently developed into evolutionary psychology.