Ethology - Tinbergen's Four Questions For Ethologists

Tinbergen's Four Questions For Ethologists

Lorenz's collaborator, Niko Tinbergen, argued that ethology always needed to include four kinds of explanation in any instance of behaviour:

• Function – How does the behaviour affect the animal's chances of survival and reproduction? Why does the animal respond that way instead of some other way?
• Causation – What are the stimuli that elicit the response, and how has it been modified by recent learning?
• Development – How does the behaviour change with age, and what early experiences are necessary for the animal to display the behaviour?
• Evolutionary history – How does the behaviour compare with similar behaviour in related species, and how might it have begun through the process of phylogeny?

These explanations are complementary rather than mutually exclusive—all instances of behaviour require an explanation at each of these four levels. For example, the function of eating is to acquire nutrients (which ultimately aids survival and reproduction), but the immediate cause of eating is hunger (causation). Hunger and eating are evolutionarily ancient and are found in many species (evolutionary history), and develop early within an organism's lifespan (development). It is easy to confuse such questions—for example, to argue that people eat because they're hungry and not to acquire nutrients—without realizing that the reason people experience hunger is because it causes them to acquire nutrients.