A branch of zoology, it is the scientific study of the natural patterns of behavior of animals (including humans) in relation to their natural environment or contexts of expression by means of direct observation, and both laboratory and field experiments, and interpreted mainly in the context of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Alternatively, it is now referred to as behavioral biology. Konrad Z. Lorenz (1902-1989), Niko Tinbergen (1907-1988) and Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) collectively received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for their work in establishing the scientific basis of ethology. From the classical ethology of Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch has emerged human ethology, neuropathology, and social ethology. The term ‘ethology’ was introduced in 1902 by the entomologist William Morton Wheeler (1865-1937), and previously with a slightly different meaning by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) in his book Scientific logic (1843).
See Comparative method, Darwinism, Displacement activities, Filial imprinting, Fixed action pattern (FAP), Habitat (ecology), Imprinting, Innate (1), Innate (2), Innate (3), Innate releasing mechanism (IRM), Instinct (1), Instinct (2), Lumping (versus splitting), Sexual imprinting