section_path: Branches of zoology/Ethology
section_name: Ethology
paragraph_text: Ethology
  
  Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior under natural conditions, as opposed to behaviorism, which focuses on behavioral response studies in a laboratory setting. Ethologists have been particularly concerned with the evolution of behavior and the understanding of behavior in terms of the theory of natural selection. In one sense, the first modern ethologist was Charles Darwin, whose book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, influenced many future ethologists.
  
  A subfield of ethology is behavioral ecology which attempts to answer Nikolaas Tinbergen 's four questions with regard to animal behavior: what are the proximate causes of the behavior, the developmental history of the organism, the survival value and phylogeny of the behavior? Another area of study is animal cognition, which uses laboratory experiments and carefully controlled field studies to investigate an animal's intelligence and learning.