Politics and people in ethology

Description

Politics and People in Ethology: Personal Reflections on the Study of Animal Behavior is the memoir of a man who has spent his life among animals and academics: observing, studying, playing, and thinking about them. From a childhood in southern California to years spent at Yale, Cambridge and Duke Universities, Peter Klopfer has always made connections between his academic work with animals, his political convictions, and his wide-ranging intellectual interests. Rather than a straightforward history of a discipline that grew up along with his own academic career, Klopfer offers personal and candid insights into ethology (the study of animal behavior). He offers reminiscences about the "fathers" of the field - Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and others. Klopfer details the ways in which he has changed his mind on the causes of species diversity in songbirds, mother-infant attachments (and the connection to the hormone oxytocin) in goats, mechanisms that control aggression, as well as observations in exotic places inhabited by elephant seals and lemurs. He also explains the work of others, such as the contribution to the study of behavior of his teacher, Yale's famed G. E. Hutchinson; his close friend and field companion Robert MacArthur and his role in the development of behavioral ecology. Klopfer provides an analysis of the possible connections between Konrad Lorenz and the National Socialist Party, as well as a polemical attack on the part of the field known as sociobiology. The book closes with a meditation on the state of the discipline, including the problems facing young scientists today.

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