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> Ethology Issue: 2010-3 Section: 14-16

Italian

 

In 1950 Lorenz founded an association called Ethologists that was formed by him, Nikolas Tinberger and Karl von Frisch; they not only studied the instinctive behaviour of the animal phylogeny and ontogeny, too; the former deals with the description of kinship and deviation among different animals, while the later studies the process by which biological development occurs in the individual and which allows the passage from the embryonic stage to adulthood. This new current of thought was in contrast with the one testified by the representatives of the American school of Behaviourism, supporters of Mechanism of Conditioning whereby you can associate to a stimulus, a reply that initially is not directly connected with the first. An example is the experience created by Ivan Pavlov who, before delivering some meat to a dog, lit a red light; the conditioned answer that was obtained was the salivation from the animal at the mere sight of the red light. The clash between the different opinions of the two schools lasted until the end of Second World War. It was difficult to find some points of agreement because the ethologists study the animals in their natural environment or in a condition of semi freedom, while the behaviourists were concerned almost exclusively to the various learning mechanisms. Only in 1973 Lorenz, Tinbergen and Von Frisch received the Nobel Prize for medicine and for biology. Nowadays these scientists are considered the emblem of Ethology and they will be remembered for the supreme contribution they gave to the development of this discipline.

We have seen how the study of the evolutionists was an input that led the various animalist biologists to devote their time to the search and the development of ethology driven by their desire to know our origin realizing that, beside the human race there are very intelligent species, like monkeys and parrots, which were initially underestimated and then amazed everybody with a behavior that earlier was thought only possible for humans. For this reason it is essential to know what exists around us to adapt our species to the planet earth shared with a considerable diversity of creatures with which it is important to establish a relationship of respect so we can all live in a very harmonious and productive way. The nature is our biologic house… and such our respect is compulsory.

 

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Giuseppe Merandino :: 20/05/2011 :: Pageviews: 8737