For many years, Ethology has been encouraging replication studies. With the aim to reduce publication bias towards surprising and significant results, also welcoming studies reporting negative results. Now, we decided go a step further: As first major journal in animal behaviour, now publish Registered Reports. Reports emphasize importance of research question quality methodology by conducting ...

Tinbergen suggested there are four major aims or questions in ethology. All of these contribute to the larger single question of why animals behave as they do. Here, I emphasise one aim, to understand the evolution of behaviour. Using studies of sexual communication in túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) I attempt to illustrate how an analysis of the past evolution of behaviour can contribut...

Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A. Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A. Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A. Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, University of Gottingen,...

We will show that ability of information processing in an amoeboid organism is higher than we had thought. The model organism is the plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum (true slime mold), which is a large aggregate of protoplasm with many nuclei. The organism found the optimal path when it obtained the multiple locations of food. A simple mathematical model for the path finding was proposed in ...

A useful source for unifying theories guiding research on the expression of emotions by the voice as well as by accompanying visual gestures (kinesics) is provided by ethology, the science devoted to the comparative study of behavior. Ethology, examining human and non-human behavior, maintains that much of behavior is shaped by phylogenetic adaptations. In this paper I will review and present e...

Human history reveals that the way in which humans treat animals is based on their views of themselves as well as of the living environment around them. These views may vary from an assumption of human superiority to one of equality between humans and animals. Recent trends affecting companion-animal welfare are: modern philosophies on animal issues, the specialised and varied roles that compan...

There is a growing recognition for the significance of evolutionary thinking in ecology and conservation biology. However, ecology and conservation studies often work with species-specific, fixed traits that ignore intraspecific variation. The way the habitat of a species is considered is an example of typological thinking biased by human perception. Structural habitat units (e.g., land cover t...

Recent advances in basic evolutionary biology have transformed ethology, but have had little impact on psychoanalysis. As evolutionary approaches to human behavior begin to focus on the specific behavior regulation mechanisms that have been shaped by natural selection, psychodynamic mechanisms become natural objects of inquiry. The capacity for repression is at the core of psychodynamics, and m...