Abstract
AbstractThis paper explores the ways in which scientists have managed the concept of animal ‘agency’ in twentieth-century field-based studies of animal behaviour. Using a range of popular accounts published between 1868 and 2012, it provides the intellectual and historical context for the sharp increase in field studies of animals – and their popularizations – that took place from the late 1960s on. It argues that the vivid depiction of animal characters and personalities, with individual and community histories intertwined, is firmly grounded in the methodologies adopted for field studies of animal behaviour. It suggests that intellectual interest in animal agency not only itself needs to be historically situated, but also close historiographical attention needs to be paid to the public deployment of the concept for intellectual, political and moral reasons. It concludes that – as far as field studies of animal behaviour are concerned – animals are not just the subjects of research, but can often be treated as active collaborators in the research process.
Highlights
Many farmers and hunters, [Niko Tinbergen] claimed, were better zoologists than the armchair professionals who never got their hands dirty or their boots muddy[1]
Using a range of popular accounts published between 1868 and 2012, it provides the intellectual and historical context for the sharp increase in field studies of animals – and their popularizations – that took place from the late 1960s on. It argues that the vivid depiction of animal characters and personalities, with individual and community histories intertwined, is firmly grounded in the methodologies adopted for field studies of animal behaviour
It suggests that intellectual interest in animal agency itself needs to be historically situated, and close historiographical attention needs to be paid to the public deployment of the concept for intellectual, political and moral reasons
Summary
Strategies for studying animal behaviour began to shift substantially around the middle of the twentieth century as a result of a number of factors. David Lack agreed, arguing that words initially used as analogies had become default explanations: instinct, he suggested, had no standard definition, and had become reified as the definitive account of non-human behavioural complexity One should, he suggested, be wary of attributing emotions to a bird ‘because a man feels emotions under similar circumstances’, just as one should avoid making assumptions about a bird’s state of mind – but since ‘in many cases the bird’s emotional state provides the essential clue to the interpretation of its behaviour’, to ignore the subjective element is to ignore a vital aspect of the animal under observation.[35] Lack’s conclusion was to call for further observation and experiment in the hope that this would lead to a terminology ‘whose concepts would be clearly defined on the basis of observed facts’.36. They focused on the more practical aspects that needed to be taken into account when considering the relationship between teleology and parsimony in understanding animal behaviour – developments that related directly to the evolution of methodologies for studying behaviour in the field as well as to the development of the theoretical understanding of animal behaviour
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