Talk:Tinbergen's four questions

Template:Animals Tinbergen’s four questions on animal behavior are already discussed in three Wikipedia articles: Nikolaas_Tinbergen, behavioral ecology, and ethology.

So a basic question regarding this article is whether it should be a stand-alone article or be incorporated into one of the existing articles.

I believe this topic deserves a stand-alone article, because of (1) its substantive importance and (2) its length once its basic ideas are fully developed and some examples are given. The causal/temporary relationships among the four explanations need to be presented graphically and the confusion over the “functional” and “evolutionary” explanations needs to be sorted out.

As I envision it, a stand-alone article should be referenced by the above articles as well as by sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, both of which do not (but should) recognize the importance’s of this topic. To point users to this article, I will insert the following statement in the above three articles plus those for evolutionary psychology and sociobiology: “See Animal Behavior Questions for an expanded discussion of Tinbergen’s four questions. The causal relationships among these explanations are presented graphically.”

W Pete Welch 21:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

In my writing the initial draft of this page, the most difficult issue was selecting its title. A colleague suggested “Tinbergen’s Four Questions.” Do other people have reactions or suggestions?

W Pete Welch 01:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)W Pete Welch

The following sentence was may be right 100 years ago, as long as a functional anatomy was not developed: "For nonbehavioral aspects of biology (e.g., anatomy), three of the four questions are applicable. Only the proximate mechanism is not relevant, as it cannot be an explanation for itself." The functional anatomy makes research concerning the proximate mechanisms of for example legs, wings, organs for hunting and eating.

Is somebody willing to give examples to the fields in the table? For example fields a1, a2, a3, a4; b1, b2, b3, b4 ect.

Article Rating

I've rated this article B class, but it barely meets the criteria. Inline citations and a graphic in the lead will keep the article class at a solid B. Justin ^chat 19:02, 15 October 2007 (UTC)