Prior to publication the study of animal coloration was plagued by fanciful speculations, post hoc explanations and untestable hypotheses. This title, originally published in 1979, draws together widely scattered research into the coloration of animals; formulates predictive hypotheses to account for color; documents the accuracy of many of these hypotheses; and suggests directions for future research. The book grew out of a symposium, The Behavioral Significance of Color at the 1977 meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, and presents evidence concerning patterns of coloration and their...

Originally published in 1928, this title looks at the link between animal and human conduct. It had long been recognized on the basis of their activities that many animals possess minds, and that these are similar in a considerable number of respects to human minds. According to the author, this book looks at man’s position within nature from the perspective of a naturalist, rather than a psychologist or philosopher. He has attempted to describe the working of mind and body in human beings and in other living things; to examine critically the mental technique involved in such...

Our views on human nature are fundamental to the whole development, indeed the whole future, of human society. Originally published in 1974, Professor Thorpe believed that this was one of the most important and significant topics to which a biologist can address himself, and in this book he attempts a synthetic view of the nature of man and animal based on the five disciplines of physiology, ethology, genetics, psychology and philosophy.

In a masterly survey of the natural order he shows the animal world as part of, yet distinct from, the inanimate world. He then treats aspects of...

Originally published in 1989, this title presents a view of adaptive behaviour which integrates both evolutionary and psychological perspectives on learning. The study of learning, and in particular conditioning, had evolved in isolation from the rest of the biological sciences, and until the late 1980s had largely ignored the fact that learning processes are adaptive functions subject to the pressures of evolutionary selection. This text is designed to give a thorough insight into contemporary views of learning mechanisms, at the same time incorporating an evolutionary perspective on the...

Originally published in 1948, the author follows the idea that the instincts are "the spring and basis of all animal behaviour (with the exception perhaps of play), and therewith the core of the animal’s mind, and that individual experience, gathered by the animal in the course of its life, may influence and reconstruct these instincts, so as to guide, in the form of intelligence and understanding, this behaviour along new (i.e. innate) paths. Thus, instinct and experience become the pillars upon which animal behaviour is built up; instinct, intelligence, and understanding form a triad...