The Study of Instinct

Behavioural ecologists and evolutionary biologists have long recognised Professor Tinbergen's great prescience in placing the study of animal behaviour firmly in an ecological and evolutionary context forty years ago. This is a reprint, with a new Preface, of the 1969 edition of The Study of Instinct, originally published in 1951. The first six chapters cover behaviour as a response to stimuli, the neurophysiological bases of innate behaviour as then understood, and the development of behavioural patterns in individuals. The final two chapters are devoted to the adaptativeness of behaviour and evolutionary aspects of behaviour.

Tinbergen's insights undoubtedly paved the way for significant observational, experimental, and theoretical advances in behavioural ecology and evolution over the past two decades. This book is reissued to make it available to a new generation of researchers and students.