ABSTRACT
Behavioral observation of wild and captive non-human animals in efforts to better understand, predict, and control their behavior precedes recorded history. The modern study of animal behavior developed primarily after the writings of Charles Darwin and the naturalists in the nineteenth century. This led to various approaches to studying behavior: ethology, behavioral ecology, and comparative psychology. We briefly discuss the development and major figures of the ethological approach to studying species-typical behavior of animals in both field and laboratory and the more adaptation-focused approaches and field studies typical of behavioral ecology. We cover comparative psychology in greater depth, whose history is a sometimes contentious amalgam of searching for similarities and differences in the mental lives and behavioral repertoires of humans and other animals focusing primarily on underlying perceptual, physiological, learning, cognitive, and affective processes. Two major compendia, decades apart, are used to show both continuity and change in comparative psychology.
