Comparative Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary and Ecological Approach

by Richard Maier

This book meets the need for a "reader-friendly" and comprehensive book in the rapidly expanding field of animal behavior. It achieves a good balance between recent, "hot" research and classic studies of animal behavior, in an organized and engaging manner. Comparative Animal Behavior surpasses other books in its coverage of the rapidly developing area of evolutionary psychology and differs from standard ones in its organizational approach which is designed to draw readers into the material in a way that no other animal behavior book does. . Brief, rather than extensive, discussions of history are presented throughout the book to hold readers' interest. The amount of material integrating psychological and biological approaches surpasses the competition. The book also responds to recent shifts in research and theoretical interests by providing current information in the areas of animal learning and cognition, parasitism, and mutualism. Topics genes and behavior; development of behavior; learning and cognition; chemical control of behavior; animal movement; and much more. Animal behaviorists, comparative psychologists, and behavioral ecologists.

569 pages, Hardcover

First published December 16, 1997