Author: Karl Groos
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Karl Groos
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In this volume Professor Groos makes a contribution to three distinct but cognate departments of inquiry: philosophical biology, animal psychology, and the genetic study of art. The world of play, to which art belongs, stands in most important and interesting contrast with the stern realities of life; yet there are few scientific works in the field of human play, and none at all in that of animal play--a fact to be accounted for, probably, by the inherent difficulties of the subject, both objective and subjective. The animal psychologist must harbour in his breast not only two souls, but more; he must unite with a thorough training in physiology, psychology, and biology the experience of a traveller, the practical knowledge of the director of a zoological garden, and the outdoor lore of a forester. And even then he could not round up his labours satisfactorily unless he were familiar with the trend of modern aesthetics. Groos holds play to be an instinct developed by natural selection, and to be on a level with the other instincts which are developed for their utility. Its utility is, in the main, twofold: First, it enables the young animal to exercise himself beforehand in the strenuous and necessary functions of its life and so to be ready for their onset; and, second, it enables the animal by a general instinct to do many things in a playful way, and so to learn for itself much that would otherwise have to be inherited in the form of special instincts; this puts a premium on intelligence, which thus comes to replace instinct"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Author: Carl GROOS (of Giessen.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Karl Groos
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781330392942
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Get Book Here

Book Description
Excerpt from The Play of Animals Play is a veritable instinct. This view is expanded in Chapter II, where we find a fine treatment in detail of such interesting topics as imitation in its relation to play, the inheritance of acquired characters apropos of the rise of instincts, and the place and function of intelligence in the origin of these primary animal activities. This chapter, dealing with the biological theory of play, is correlated with Chapter V, in which the Psychology of Animal Play is treated. Together they furnish the philosophical and theoretical basis of the book, as the chapters in between furnish the detailed data of fact. I shall return to the biological matter below. Chapters III and IV go into the actual Plays of Animals with a wealth of detail, richness of literary information, and soundness of critical interpretation which are most heartily to be commended. Indeed, the fact that the first book on this subject is at the same time one of such unusual value, both as science and as theory, should be a matter of congratulation to workers in biology and in psychology. The collected cases, the classification of animal plays, as well as the setting of interpretation in which Professor Groos has placed them - all are likely to stand, I think, as a piece of work of excellent quality in a new but most important field of inquiry. With this general and inadequate notice of the divisions and scope of the book, I may throw together in a few sentences the main theoretical positions to which the author's study brings him. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Author: Thomas Bingley
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 95

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits" by Thomas Bingley Using the persona, "Uncle Thomas," Bingley used this text to teach readers about wild animals. Characteristics, behaviors, habitats, and more are discussed in this text in an entertaining and heartwarming way. From horses to swallows and everything in between, the wild animals in this book become characters in their own rights.

Author: Rebecca Stefoff
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1608706141
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior. It was widely thought that animal play, mostly in mammals, was part of Darwinian natural selection and somehow fit into survival of the fittest. However, animal researchers believe that animals play out of pure joy, rather than aiding in their survival. This jovial book about animal play, tells the secrets of, and the science behind, clever baboons that know which cars to break into for snacks, mighty elephants that grieve, tricky octopuses that squirt water, and beetles that read messages through their feet. This book includes explanative text by award-winning author Rebecca Stefoff and an extensive bibliography. Key scientific terms and phrases are explained and includes procedures for scientific observation.

Author: Nikolaas Tinbergen
Publisher: Pygmalion Press, an imprint of Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 1951, The Study of Instinct is widely considered the foundational text of ethology, the study of natural behavior. Written to introduce the largely German literature of the early ethologists to an English-speaking audience, Tinbergen first describes the objectives, scope, and limitations of ethology, then goes on to describe the influence of external stimuli and internal factors on behavior, proposes his famous hierarchical-motivational model for the control of behavior, and ends with accounts of the development, adaptiveness, and evolution of behavior, including human behavior. The volume remains a classic and is often cited in the opening sentence of modern papers on behavior. “... all in all, I think most students will learn more from the seemingly timeless Study of Instinct than from this or any other retrospective.” – Gould 1992, Science “A few parts of the book still strike one as modern. The opening chapter, in which Tinbergen formulates his famous ‘four questions’ about animal behaviour (questions about mechanism, development, adaptiveness and evolution), and discusses the extent to which they are logically separate yet practically interrelated, should be read by every student taking a course in ethology. The section entitled ‘Learning Processes’ is a small masterpiece, prefiguring the ‘constraints on learning’ debate by 20 years and describing Tinbergen’s own classic work on learning in herring gulls and digger wasps... The Study of Instinct still has important general messages for anyone studying ethology; it will always be a significant book for historians of science; and it gives a first-hand account of some of the most important research that has been done on animal behaviour.” – Roper 1989, Trends in Ecology & Evolution “Tinbergen’s book is a positive requirement for all students of behavior. It is most refreshing and stimulating account of some of the important contributions European scholars have been making to the study of instincts, a field of behavior sorely neglected in American psychology today... There is no question but that Tinbergen’s book is an important contribution to the study of behavior.” – Steller 1976, The Quarterly Review of Biology “A well-reasoned and thoroughly readable book which points up the complexity of even the simplest unlearned behavior.” – Thomson 1952, Scientific American “Dr Tinbergen’s book is an admirably clear, authoritative and factual account of recent work on animal instinct which can be strongly recommended to students of biology, both elementary and advanced, as giving a first hand account of the main trends of modern field research into animal behaviour.” – Thorpe 1954, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science “American psychology has concentrated more and more during this century on the behavior of mammals, and even among mammals has restricted itself mostly to primates (man, chimpanzee, macaque) and a cheap primate substitute, the rat (which is not studied for its rattiness, so to speak, but as a bearer of anxiety and a maker of cognitive maps)... The importance of Tinbergen’s book is that it presents systematically a large amount of significant work by the European school of biologists, making it accessible to the English-speaking reader. The dominance of learning theory in America, established by Thorndike, Holt, and Watson, makes us persistently forget the constitutional factor in behavior (that is, instinct), and this book may help bring it to the graduate student’s attention even if his instructors are by now too set in their ways to give it the attention it deserves... The style is somewhat academic, but the book is full of fascinating, and solidly authenticated, observations of animal behavior. It should be read by everyone, psychologist or zoologist, who is interested in mechanisms of response.” – Hebb 1952, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology “[This volume] summarizes much ingenious experimental work and present a point of view that is bound to have an influence on later behavior studies.” – Carmichael 1952, Science “[This] is an important book and one that should be read by all students of animal behavior... The ingenious experiments and theoretical discussions will afford many hours of stimulating reading.” – Aronson 1953, Copeia “... a scholarly and well-documented review of the general field [of ethology]... This books performs a beautiful job of pulling together diverse and diverging observations, experiments and concepts, suggesting theories that will surely lead to much new and fruitful work.” – Bates 1953, American Anthropologist “Tinbergen’s fine book is an important synthesis and a valuable introduction to this actively moving field.” – Greenberg 1952, Physiological Zoology “The final impression one gets from Tinbergen’s book is that of the immense richness and incredible variety of behavioral phenomena which are there for the studying if we break out of our rat-monkey-man triangle.” – O’Kelly 1952, Psychological Bulletin “It is a pleasure to describe and discuss Tinbergen’s work. Well written, with elegant development of ideas and arguments, courageous in challenging faulty views and procedures, calm and confident in style, yet stimulating, the book should be read by anyone interested in the behavior of birds.” – Pitelka 1953, The Condor

Author: Erich Wasmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal intelligence
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Giorgio Samorini
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594775958
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 79

Get Book Here

Book Description
An Italian ethnobotanist explores the remarkable propensity of wild animals to seek out and use psychoactive substances. • Throws out behaviorist theories that claim animals have no consciousness. • Offers a completely new understanding of the role psychedelics play in the development of consciousness in all species. • Reveals drug use to be a natural instinct. From caffeine-dependent goats to nectar addicted ants, the animal kingdom offers amazing examples of wild animals and insects seeking out and consuming the psychoactive substances in their environments. Author Giorgio Samorini explores this little-known phenomenon and suggests that, far from being confined to humans, the desire to experience altered states of consciousness is a natural drive shared by all living beings and that animals engage in these behaviors deliberately. Rejecting the Western cultural assumption that using drugs is a negative action or the result of an illness, Samorini opens our eyes to the possibility that beings who consume psychedelics--whether humans or animals--contribute to the evolution of their species by creating entirely new patterns of behavior that eventually will be adopted by other members of that species. The author's fascinating accounts of mushroom-loving reindeer, intoxicated birds, and drunken elephants ensure that readers will never view the animal world in quite the same way again.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 630

Get Book Here

Book Description