What themes unify animal behavior?
The major theme that unifies the study of animal behavior is an interest in how animals interact with each other and their environment, ultimately with respect to how these interactions influence an individual’s survival and reproduction. How diverse is the field of animal behavior? The study of animal behavior is enormously diverse, largely because behavior is central to so many aspects of an animal’s biology. Virtually any kind of behavior performed by an animal may be the subject of study. Some questions that have attracted considerable interest include those about how animals communicate, how they choose mates, how they find food and shelter, and how they are affected by the negative impact of human activities on the environment. How did you and other colleagues become interested in animal behavior? Many scientists studying animal behavior begin with a simple interest in watching animals; others come to the study of behavior from related fields, such as ecology, evolutionary biolog
