TINBERGEN'S FOUR QUESTIONS
Tinbergen’s 4 questions are a long standing method of interpreting and studying animal behaviors derived from Aristotle’s four clauses. His 1963 paper On aims and methods of Ethology details: “Causation”, “Survival Value”, “Ontogeny” and “Evolution”. On this site we refer to Evolution as Phylogeny, this topic covers the evolutionary history of a behavior and consider the differences in behaviors between one species and its relatives. Ontogeny is about how a behavior develops and questions the change of behavior over an animal's life span. Survival value or adaptive value is about how a behavior benefits the animal performing it. We’ve decided to use adaptive value rather than survival value because evolution selects for traits that help an animal pass on its genes. These adaptations may not be related to survival but mating and courtship. Mechanism, or as Tinbergen puts it “causation” refers to how the animal undertakes the action or actions that make up a behavior.
The questions are also organized into categories of Ultimate and Proximate (The evolutionary forces behind the behavior) and between a “snap shot” and “story” (where story gives a historical perspective and snapshot focuses on the behavior in its current state.
(Source of figure: Reed College Bio 342 lecture, 2016)
Tinbergen’s 4 questions are a long standing method of interpreting and studying animal behaviors derived from Aristotle’s four clauses. His 1963 paper On aims and methods of Ethology details: “Causation”, “Survival Value”, “Ontogeny” and “Evolution”. On this site we refer to Evolution as Phylogeny, this topic covers the evolutionary history of a behavior and consider the differences in behaviors between one species and its relatives. Ontogeny is about how a behavior develops and questions the change of behavior over an animal's life span. Survival value or adaptive value is about how a behavior benefits the animal performing it. We’ve decided to use adaptive value rather than survival value because evolution selects for traits that help an animal pass on its genes. These adaptations may not be related to survival but mating and courtship. Mechanism, or as Tinbergen puts it “causation” refers to how the animal undertakes the action or actions that make up a behavior.
The questions are also organized into categories of Ultimate and Proximate (The evolutionary forces behind the behavior) and between a “snap shot” and “story” (where story gives a historical perspective and snapshot focuses on the behavior in its current state.
(Source of figure: Reed College Bio 342 lecture, 2016)