Nikolaas Tinbergen: biography of this Dutch ethologist

Nikolaas Tinbergen was a pioneer zoologist in the study of animal behavior and a historical figure of great relevance in explaining the birth of a discipline such as ethology.

His scientific contributions earned him numerous awards and today his discoveries are already part of scientific heritage that has helped us better understand how animals behave in their habitats natural.

In this article we will see a short biography of Nikolaas Tinbergen and we will know what were the main contributions of him to science and research of animal behavior.

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Nikolaas Tinbergen: biography of this researcher

Nikolaas Tinbergen (1907-1988) was a pioneering Dutch zoologist in the field of ethology, the scientific discipline that is responsible for studying animal behavior in its natural habitat. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Karl Von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz, for his findings on the organization and obtaining of individual and social behavior patterns in animals.

Tinbergen developed a strong interest in animals and nature at an early age, as when he was a child he used to observe the behavior of birds and fish, which aroused his interest in biology. In 1932, he completed his doctorate with a dissertation on the behavior of wasps, demonstrating that wasps used reference points to orient themselves.

Together with Lorenz, Tinbergen laid the foundations of European ethology and he proposed that the study of this discipline should be applied both to the study of animal behavior and to that of human behavior, applying the same methodology. Furthermore, they both hypothesized that all animals have a fixed action pattern, a set repeated and diverse of movements, rather than reacting solely on impulse in response to factors environmental

Tinbergen's work in the field of animal research was interrupted by World War II, as he was taken prisoner and spent two years in a German hostage camp. After the war, he was invited to the United States and England to present his ethological studies. In the English country, he settled as a professor at the University of Oxford.

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The 4 big questions

As a curious naturalist that he was, Nikolaas Tinbergen always tried to understand the world around him and His works had a great impact on the development of ethology, both at the theoretical and at the theoretical level. practical. In ethology, causality and ontogeny represent the “proximate mechanisms”, and adaptation and phylogeny the “ultimate mechanisms”.

Tinbergen systematized his interest in animal behavior and in the explanation of these mechanisms in four great questions based on Aristotle's types of causality.

1. Causality or mechanism

How animal behavior occurs in terms of its mechanical or causal properties. It is about answering questions such as: what are the stimuli that provoke a certain behavioral response? How has this behavior been modified by learning? How does behavior work at the molecular, physiological, cognitive and social level? How are the different levels related?

2. Development or ontogeny

Explanation of animal behavior in functional terms. Try to clarify issues such as: How does the animal's behavior develop throughout its life? How does behavior change with age? What early experiences are necessary for a behavior to occur?

3. Adaptation

How animal behavior influences survival and reproduction. It represents one of the ultimate or final causes; that is, the value and adaptive advantage of having a certain behavioral repertoire incorporated.

4. Evolution or phylogeny

It involves the historical sequence of changes that take place in a given evolutionary time period. Try to compare the behavior of a certain species with that of a similar one, as well as responding to how some particular species could arise, what allows one species to become a different one, etc.

Scientific investigations

Tinbergen and Lorenz studied the behavior of the birds together. His only published joint study of him was on the behavior of wild geese.. In this sense, they observed how the geese, when seeing a displaced egg near the nest, used their beak to make it roll and return to its place. If the egg was removed, the animal continued to generate the same motor behavior, as if the egg was still there. And if other objects with the same shape were used (like a golf ball), exactly the same thing happened.

Another of Tinbergen's investigations was the one he carried out studying the behavior of seagulls. For example, he was able to observe that shortly after the eggs hatched, the parents removed the shells from the nest. After conducting several experiments, he demonstrated that this behavior had a certain function and was to keep the young safe from predators.

He also studied behavior and the tendency of younger gulls to peck at the red spot on the dominant gull's beak, a behavior that induces parents to regurgitate food so that they can eat. Tinbergen conducted an experiment that consisted of offering the hatchlings a variety of cardboard gull heads that varied in beak shape and color. For each combination of shape and color, he measured the hatchlings' preferences by counting the pecks they gave in a given time.

What Tinbergen found in his study with young gulls is that they are born with a preference for gulls. elongated things of yellow color and with red spots that were incorporated as standard in their behavioral repertoire. In other words, young gulls come equipped with specific genes that determine and promote a certain behavior in a specific habitat.

With these kinds of observations it was like a new branch of knowledge appeared that draws on two scientific disciplines, biology and psychology, giving rise to what we know today as ethology.

His legacy

Many of the work done by Tinbergen have become classics today, both in comparative psychology and in biology, including, in addition to those already mentioned, his other studies on the behavior of spiny fish, wasps or butterflies

However, Tinbergen reached the peak of recognition of him when he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973, which he shared with his colleagues Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch. As a curiosity, it should be noted that the money received from the award was used to help in the investigation of childhood autism.

Tinbergen also received other awards such as the Swammerdam medal and various honorary degrees from prestigious universities such as Edinburgh and the University of Leicester. In addition, he was a member of the Royal Society in England and a foreign member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Bibliographic references:

• Bolhuis, J. J. (2004). Biography of a brilliant birdwatcher.
• Burkhardt, R. W. (2005). Patterns of behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the founding of ethology. University of Chicago Press.