Tinbergen's four questions
Analysis of animal behaviour / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Tinbergen's four questions, named after 20th century biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, are complementary categories of explanations for animal behaviour. These are also commonly referred to as levels of analysis.[1] 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.[2][page needed]