1935: Instincts - The book of science

Instincts
Anthropomorphism
Animals like us
Commentary

Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen entomology

Instincts

Unintuitively, scientists
tended to understand the behavior of animals
as though they were like us.
Breakthroughs came
through objective observation
and experimentation.
1. Waggle dancing
Von Frisch studied the dancing of honey bees
communicating direction and distance
to food, water, or shelter.
2. Imprinting
Lorenz studied the instincts
of geese and jackdaws
and rediscovered the way that birds
identify with the first moving thing they see
as though it were their mother.
3. Supernormal stimuli
Tinbergen constructed artificial objects
with exaggerated characteristics
to stimulate selected instinctual behaviors
such as the feeding behaviors of gull chicks.

Anthropomorphism

As humans, we tend to think
that all the other animals
behave as we do,
but it’s more useful
to claim that humans
behave as other animals.

Animals like us

Animals like us
know how to suckle
as soon as we are born,
and when objects
are thrown at our heads
we automatically duck.
Animals like us
yawn involuntarily,
cry when we are sad,
laugh when tickled,
fear the unfamiliar,
and desire food and sex.
It’s not only
when our behavior
is selfish,
uncontrollable,
violent, or irrational
that we act like animals.

The opposite extreme from anthropormorphic thinking is thinking that we are not like other animals. In particular, it is wrong to think that humans have no instincts, that all adult behaviors are learned or follow from the exercise of reason and desire, and that desire and instinct have nothing in common.

Scientists claim that when babies use the same phonemes to mean different things they are expressing a language instinct that distinguishes humans from other primates. In my opinion, this, too, will eventually be considered anthropocentric.