CLIL CLIL CLIL NATURAL SCIENCE ETHOLOGY Read the following definition of Ethology and answer the questions. Ethology is the study of animal behaviour from a biological, functional and evolutionary point of view, with an emphasis on behaviour which is specific to a species. A relatively recent discipline, established in the 1930s, it also studies how different organisms react to their environment. The major difference between Ethology and Psychology, which studies human behaviour, is that Ethology avoids attributing human characteristics to animals. Human beings are not the only creatures which have evolved certain behavioural characteristics. All mammals experience play, curiosity, fear and aggression. 1. What does Ethology study? 2. How does it differ from Psychology? 3. Why is the environment important? Read the text and decide if the statements below are true (T) or false (F). Adolescence in mammals The life of mammals can be divided into four life stages with different physical and behavioural characteristics: infancy, juvenescence, adolescence and adulthood. Juvenescence is the period between weaning and the onset of puberty. However, in many mammals, the onset of puberty does not necessarily mean that they are adults and able to reproduce, so the term adolescence is used to describe the interval between puberty and the effective reproductive stage. Moreover, while only a few species of mammals undergo a period of adolescence, 136
