Prior to the development of animal sciences such as comparative psychology and ethology, interpretation of animal behaviour tended to favour a minimalistic approach known as behaviourism. This approach refuses to ascribe to an animal a capability beyond the least demanding that would explain a behaviour; anything more than this is seen as unwarranted anthropomorphism. The behaviourist argument is, why should humans postulate consciousness and all its near-human implications in animals to explain some behaviour, if mere stimulus-response is a sufficient explanation to produce the same effects?