Why do neuroscientists study weird animals?: A primer on neuroethology
Why do neuroscientists study weird animals? And I don’t mean borderline weird; I mean the kind of extraordinary animals that can create electric fields and lift 100
Why do neuroscientists study weird animals?: A primer on neuroethology
Why do neuroscientists study weird animals? And I don’t mean borderline weird; I mean the kind of extraordinary animals that can create electric fields and lift 100 times their body weight. The sort of animals that can camouflage despite being colorblind and can capture flying prey in fractions of a second. The kind of creatures that can regenerate spinal cords and see with their ears. For centuries, neuroscientists have studied these strange beings. But why? Is it that the scientists themselves are weird and wish to study like creatures – a condition often subsumed by our species? Or is there something more nuanced about this field of study? And importantly, why have the past few decades led to a dramatic reduction in the number of weird animal studies?
What is neuroethology?
Neuroscience is broadly the study of the nervous system, whereas neuroethology is the study of the neural basis of natural behaviors. In other words, neuroethologists attempt to uncover basic principles of the nervous system that drive species-typical behaviors (e.g. camouflage in cephalopods such as octopuses and squids). Often, neuroethologists use lesser known or non-canonical model organisms (i.e. non-human species used to understand generalizable biological phenomena that relate to other organisms). Neuroethology often considers how behaviors and their neural underpinnings have evolved thereby taking a comparative approach to understanding the nervous system – studying both the similarities and differences between animals to understand both species-specific and conserved principles.
For example, a neuroethologist may consider the following question – why are sloths so slothful? Does their obligate sluggishness arise from a general slowness of the nervous system? This question was addressed in a 1983 paper entitled the “Neuroethological role of dynamic traits of excitable cells: A proposal for the physiological basis of slothfulness in the sloth” wherein the following passage deftly illustrates the importance of neuroethological studies.
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