Animals and why they do what they do — from invertebrate diversity to ethology, where behaviour is treated as an evolved trait.
12 topics · 11 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles
Jean-Henri Fabre · 1913
Close, patient observation of beetles and other insects in their own habitat argues that instinct, not reason, drives even the most apparently…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
A Devonian Tetrapod-Like Fish and the Evolution of the Tetrapod Body Plan
Edward B. Daeschler, Neil H. Shubin & Farish A. Jenkins Jr. · 2006
Describes a Devonian fish with a wrist-like joint in its fin, an intermediate form filling the gap between fish and the first four-limbed land…
Primary sources and full treatments.
A Manual of the Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals
Thomas Henry Huxley · 1877
Works through the invertebrate phyla organ system by organ system, arguing that a shared plan of construction, not surface resemblance, is what…
+7 more at this level
11 works
Jean-Henri Fabre
Close, patient observation of beetles and other insects in their own habitat argues that instinct, not reason, drives even the most apparently intelligent insect behaviour.
about 6.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Preston Foerder et al.
An Asian elephant stacks and stands on a block to reach suspended food, taken as evidence that insight problem-solving is not limited to primates and corvids.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Edward B. Daeschler, Neil H. Shubin & Farish A. Jenkins Jr.
Describes a Devonian fish with a wrist-like joint in its fin, an intermediate form filling the gap between fish and the first four-limbed land animals.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Works through the invertebrate phyla organ system by organ system, arguing that a shared plan of construction, not surface resemblance, is what should group animals together.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Niko Tinbergen
Sets out four distinct questions any behaviour raises - causation, development, survival value and evolution - and argues ethology had confused itself by treating them as one question.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Robert M. Seyfarth, Dorothy L. Cheney & Peter Marler
Shows vervet monkeys give acoustically distinct alarm calls for different predators and that other monkeys respond with the appropriate evasive action, evidence the calls function referentially rather than as raw expressions of fear.
Peter R. Grant & B. Rosemary Grant
Uses three decades of measurements on Daphne Major to show that natural selection on finch beak size reverses direction from year to year with rainfall, so evolution there is real-time and largely unpredictable.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Mark S. Springer, William J. Murphy, Eduardo Eizirik & Stephen J. O'Brien
Molecular dating places the ancestors of most modern mammal orders before the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, arguing mammals were already diversifying into ecological niches while dinosaurs still existed.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Edward O. Wilson & Bert Hölldobler
Argues eusociality arose repeatedly through a common route - a defensible nest plus overlapping generations - and that group-level selection on colonies, not just kin selection, has shaped its evolution.
link checked 17 Sept 2026David B. Wake & Vance T. Vredenburg
Argues amphibian decline and disappearance rates already meet the criteria for a mass extinction event, driven by habitat loss, disease and climate change acting together.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Christine Merlin, Robert J. Gegear & Steven M. Reppert
Silencing the circadian clock in monarch butterfly antennae, rather than the brain, disrupts sun-compass migration, locating the clock that times the compass in the antennae themselves.
link checked 17 Sept 2026