ABSTRACT
Konrad Lorenz is famous as an expert on the behaviour of animals; he is also an extraordinarily gifted observer and in prose that conveys a vivid picture of what he has seen in an underwater world and in the life of reptiles, mammals and birds. He expounds the insights he has derived from these observations, as penetrating as any that psychiatrists have based on the study of humankind. Konrad Lorenz demonstrates most convincingly that aggression is instinctive and wells up spontaneously; it is not primarily reactive, and for its appearance it does not depend finally on appropriate stimuli. Rats living together recognize their common allegiance by smell, and the stranger rat who exhibits the wrong smell is attacked and destroyed as soon as he is recognized. When two clans of rats are living in proximity they are constantly at war; and such warfare must exert a huge selection pressure in the direction of ever-increasing ability to fight.
