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ethologist

ethologist

1 8.4
A scientist who studies how animals behave in the wild
  • noun
  • /ˌiːθəˈlɒdʒɪst/
  • Specialized
translation icon : etólogo
  • During her research, the ethologist documented the complex social interactions among dolphins.
  • ethologists study animal behavior

Tim Bergen, another famous ethologist, define the four questions.

Examples

  • As an ethologist, Dissanayake illustrates throughout her work how "making special" creates bonds between parents and children, how communities create their identity and sustain their members, how tradition is maintained, and how ancestral spirits are honored.

    Academic text (1998)
  • An ethologist observed the migration patterns of birds in their natural habitats.

  • German ethologist Paul Leyhausen, one of the world's great authorities on cats big and small, attempted to continuously follow and record the behavior of three farm cats in the 1950s.

    Fiction book (1998)
  • For example, the great ethologist Konrad Lorenz got goslings to follow him around as if he were their mother, because goslings are born with a mental program telling them to follow the large moving object that they see within a short critical period after they hatch.

    Academic text (1991)
  • The term meme, a portmanteau of mimesis and gene, was coined in 1976 by British ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

    Blog text (25)
  • It is that quality, said ethologist Jane Goodall—not toolmaking or feeling for another person—that separates us from other primates.

    Academic text (2000)
  • To see whether symmetry played a role in the perception of human beauty, ethologist Karl Grammer of Vienna University and I conducted a study in which men and women were presented with digitalized images of opposite-sex faces of varying degrees of symmetry.

    Academic text (1993)
  • Earthly ethologists have drawn a sort of curve, plotting mass against longevity for mammalian species, and it demonstrates that the smaller the creature, in general, the shorter its life expectancy.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • Ethologists, scientists who study and compare the biological bases of behavior in the animal kingdom, contend that hoarding is part of our cognitive hardwiring, a fixed action pattern with a distinct zoological heritage.

    Academic text (2016)
  • The ethologist published her findings after spending years studying the behaviors of wolves in the wild.

Synonyms

zoologist
vsethologist
  • Specialized
10 6.1

A person who studies animals and how they live

focuses narrowly on animal behavior in natural environments
animal scientist
vsethologist
3.9

A person who studies animals' bodies, behaviour, and care

focuses on behavior especially in wild natural environments rather than management

How Specialized

ethologist
  • Specialized
1 8.4
psychobiologist
  • Specialized
1 8.7
zoologist
  • Specialized
10 6.1
biologist
111 3.5

Surface Forms

ethologist singular
ethologists plural

Morphology

ethologist = ethology (transparent) = ethology + ist

Formed by the productive agentive suffix '-ist' added to 'ethology'; meaning 'a person who practices/studies ethology' is directly predictable.

Etymology

The word ethologist comes from the Greek root ethos, meaning 'habit' or 'character', and the part -logy, meaning 'study'. So an ethologist is a scientist who studies animals' habits and behavior in nature.