Synthetic ethology is proposed as a means of conducting controlled experiments investigating the mechanisms and evolution of communication. After a discussion of the goals and methods of synthetic ethology, two series of experiments are described based on at least 5000 breeding cycles. The first demonstrates the evolution of cooperative communication in a population of simple machines. The aver...

Ern} o Téglás,1,2 Anna Gergely,3 Krisztina Kupán,2 Ádám Miklósi,3 and József Topál2,* 1Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, Hattyú 14, 1051 Budapest, Hungary 2Comparative Behavioural Research Group, Research Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Victor Hugo Street, 18-22, 1132 Budapest, Hungary 3Department of Ethology, Loránd Eötvös University, Pázmány P...

Karl Grammer studied Zoology, Physics and Anthropology at the University of Munich. He received his PhD in Biology in 1982 at the University of Munich and the Research Institute for Human Ethology, Max-Planck-Society. His PhD thesis deals with self organization in groups of preschool children. In 1991 he became the Scientific Director of the Ludwig-BoltzmannInstitute for Urban Ethology in Vienn...

In their target article ‘Cognitive Ethology: A new approach for studying human cognition’, Kingstone, Smilek, and Eastwood (2008) remind us that it is important for cognitive psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists to keep asking whether their studies in the laboratory capture how humans think and act in their natural habitat. This reminder seems well warranted. When asking fellow researche...

Whilst ethology has garnered the attention of historians of science, particularly those interested in the biological and behavioural sciences, historians of medicine have yet to explore ethology’s medical significance. Ethology, “the biological study of behaviour”, is historically associated with the work of Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, who, alongside Karl von Frisch, were awarded the ...

In the study of animal behaviour, annotation and analysis is largely done manually either directly in field or from recordings. An emerging field, computational ethology, challenging this approach by using machine learning to automate process. However, use such methods general complicated a lack modularity, leading high cost long development times. At same time, benefits implementing fully auto...