ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a significant rapprochement between the specialists of animal learning and the ethological tradition. Most of the empirical work carried out by Burrhus Frederic Skinner has been on animals, and in so far as it has provided with lawful results, it can be seen as a contribution to the study of animal behaviour, even by those who are not ready to accept his extrapolation to humans. The chapter reviews that the use of animals in the behaviour laboratory, as was common in the first half of the twentieth century, was not aimed essentially at studying a species' behaviour for itself: rats were not used because of any special interest in the way rats behave. The chapter examines that animal behaviour was studied for itself, in its own right; species-specific behaviour was given main attention; and taking over the old fascination for instincts in animals, phylogenetically established activities were given priority over individual learning.
