Understanding Animal Behaviour

Sergio Pellis is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He has been researching animal behaviour and neuroscience since 1976 and has maintained a research laboratory at the University of Lethbridge since 1990. For the past 13 years, he has been a Board of Governors Research Chair, and in 2014 was awarded the Speaker Gold Medal for Research. Vivien Pellis was an Adjunct Professor and currently remains a Research Associate in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge. She has been a university researcher in animal behaviour and neuroscience since 1981, investigating a diversity of behaviours and species.

• Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. What is the problem and what is the solution?; 2. Behaviour as a means, not an end; 3.The deep structure of behavior; 4. The brain is not alone; 5. Bringing it all together: steps in the descriptive process; 6. What of the future?; Epilogue; Appendix A. Eshkol–Wachman movement notation and descriptive analysis; Appendix B. Practice, practice, practice; References; Index.

'Describing what animals actually do in their normal daily activities was deemed essential by the early naturalists and ethologists. Today, many journals actively discourage publishing such research findings. What the Pellis team accomplishes in this book is to document, based on their and others' extensive experience and accomplishments, that careful description can itself be hypothesis driven and answer research questions that experiments with simple, but convenient, dependent measures cannot. This compact guide elegantly shows how to use modern methods to describe and quantify behaviour and embed findings in the behaviour systems in which they occur. From seemingly simple behaviour patterns such as righting, huddling, and reaching, to fighting, foraging, play, and courtship, the authors provide myriad insights and research guidance. Today, in a rapidly changing world, it is more essential than ever to study how the behaviour of animals is being altered, both in natural communities and in experimental laboratories.' Gordon M. Burghardt, University of Tennessee, USA