Tinbergen's four questions

Common card · No. 435821

Tinbergen's four questions, named after 20th century biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, are complementary categories of explanations for animal behaviour. These are commonly called levels of analysis. It suggests that an integrative understanding of behaviour must include ultimate (evolutionary) explanations, in particular: behavioural adaptive functions phylogenetic history; and the proximate explanations underlying physiological mechanisms ontogenetic/developmental history.

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