Tinbergen married Elisabeth Rutten in they had five children together. Soon afterward, the Tinbergens embarked on an expedition to Greenland, where Tinbergen studied the role of evolution in the behavior of snow buntings, phalaropes, and Eskimo sled dogs.
When he returned to the Netherlands in , he became an instructor at the State University, where he organized an undergraduate course on animal behavior. Tinbergen's work had been recognized in the field of biology but it was not until after he met Lorenz—the acknowledged father of ethology—that his work began to form a directed body of research. Tinbergen took his family to Lorenz's home in Austria for a summer so the two men could work together. Although they published only one paper together, their collaboration lasted a number of years.
During , Tinbergen and Lorenz began constructing a theoretical framework for the study of ethology, which was then a fledgling field. They hypothesized that instinct, as opposed to simply being a response to environmental factors, arises from an animal's impulses.
This idea is expressed by the concept of a fixed-action pattern, a repeated, distinct set of movements or behaviors, which Tinbergen and Lorenz believed all animals have. A fixed-action pattern is triggered by something in the animal's environment. In some species of gull, for instance, hungry chicks will peck at a decoy with a red spot on its bill, a characteristic of the gull.
Tinbergen showed that in some animals learned behavior is critical for survival. The oystercatcher, for instance, has to learn which objects to peck at for food by watching its mother.
Tinbergen and Lorenz also demonstrated that animal behavior can be the result of contradictory impulses and that a conflict between drives may produce a reaction that is strangely unsuited to the stimuli. For example, an animal defending its territory against a formidable attacker, caught between the impulse to fight or flee, may begin grooming or eating.
Regarding his collaboration with Lorenz, Tinbergen is quoted in Nobel Prize Winners as saying: "We 'clicked' at once…. Tinbergen spent much of the war in a hostage camp because he had protested the State University of Leiden's decision to remove three Jewish faculty members from the staff. Subjects: Science and technology — Life Sciences. View all reference entries ». View all related items in Oxford Reference ».
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Oxford Reference. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive. Work Some animal and human patterns of behavior are innate. Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page. Nobel Prizes Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in , for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
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