The study of animal behavior as observed in the natural environment and in the context of evolutionary adaptation.
The pioneering work of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen in the 1930s established a theoretical foundation for ethology, which has had an effect on such wide-ranging disciplines as genetics, anthropology, and political science in addition to psychology. Ethologists believe that an animal must be studied on its own terms rather than primarily in relation to human beings, with a focus on its normal behavior and environment. They study animal behavior from the dual perspective of both "proximate explanations" (which concern the individual lifetime of an animal) and "ultimate explanations" (which concern an animal's phylogenetic past). Proximate explanations answer questions about how a specific behavior occurs; ultimate explanations answer questions about why a behavior occurs.
