ABSTRACT
The science of animal minds is perhaps more appropriately called the sciences of animal minds, given how many different disciplines are involved in investigating the cognitive capacities of animals. Ethology can be described as the scientific study of the behavior of animals as evolved organisms, in the context of anatomy, physiology, and the natural environment. Konrad Lorenz describes ethology as the biological study of behavior, and, more colorfully, Nikolaas Tinbergen describes ethology as the process of interviewing an animal in its own language. Classical ethologists were interested in species-specific, and in the interaction between biological inheritance and environmental influences. Lorenz, along with Tinbergen, was interested in the cause of these sorts of behaviors, the purposes of the behaviors, how they developed, and how they were implemented in the physical organism. As authors move on to examine about consciousness, belief, communication, social cognition, and morality in other animals, they calibrating their concepts given what they find from the sciences.
