Professional researchers with varying backgrounds and interests study animal behavior. For the most part, these include biologists. ethologists, psychologists, and anthropologists who observe animals under different circumstances and with different interests. Many researchers also study animals but spend little to no time actually watching the creatures in whom they’re interested. These include philosophers and those people interested in the broad transdisciplinary field called animal studies.

All of these people can contribute to learning more about these amazing beings, but there is no substitute for carefully observing—”slow watching”—the nonhumans in which they’re keenly interested. These data and stories are crucial for learning who these beings truly are —for “minding them”—and for appreciating what their capacities for behavioral flexibility and highly evolved levels of consciousness tell us about how they think and feel about how their lives can change because of the behavior of members of the same species and other species, including humans, and what they think and feel about intrusions into their heads, hearts, and homes.¹

What is ethology?

Ethology is the study of animal behavior. It focuses mainly on wild animals in their natural habitats, although some ethological work has involved captive animals. In 1973, ethologists Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their discoveries related to animal behavior.

I’ve been an ethologist since I was around three years of age and even was “minding” animals” without even knowing. I’ve continued to do so for more than 50 years in that I carefully watch—patiently slow watch—animals, primarily if not exclusively in their natural habitats. During the last few years, more and more people have asked me what ethology is and what do ethologists do because these words are increasingly appearing in discussions of animal behavior even in popular media.

Ethologists have always thought that behavior is but one way in which animals speak to us. Following up on Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen’s classic work in ethology, in which he stressed that studies of behavior should center on four areas of inquiry, namely, evolution, adaptation, causation, and ontogeny (development), in an essay called “Amending Tinbergen: A fifth aim for ethology,” Gordon Burghardt added a fifth area he called “private experience” to Tinbergen’s list. In addition, Dale Jamieson and I wrote a paper called “On Aims and Methods of Cognitive Ethology” in which we showed just how fruitful and influential Tinbergen’s work has been in the study of animal minds, although he didn’t do this sort of research. Today, numerous ethologists have noted that we must learn about and appreciate animal minds and what’s in them, hence the enormous growth of cognitive ethology.

The significant contributions of cognitive ethology

Cognitive ethology refers specifically to the study of animal minds—what’s in them and how they work, their thoughts and feelings. My own research has focused on the study of animal minds, including their cognitive and emotional capacities.

Cognitive ethologists want to know what it is like to be another animal. What is their lived experience from their point of view? What do they see, hear, and smell? Why do they do what they do? Empirical scientific evidence combined with common sense and intuition is all it takes to get a pretty reliable picture of who animals are and what they want and need.

Following Tinbergen’s suggestions, ethologists are also interested in other important questions: How and why have emotions and behaviors evolved? How do animals adapt their behaviors to succeed in a changing situation or environment and what causes them to do so? How do behaviors develop within an individual or society?

Flexibility of behavior—the ability to change your response when things around you change—also is important because it’s a sign of awareness, or what scientists call a mark of consciousness. This shows that an animal is thinking and acting with intention, not instinct. The animal is evaluating their situation, considering past experiences, and deciding what to do based on the present moment and imagined future situations.

What goes around comes around

For far too many years, people interested in animal minds were considered to be on the fringes of “real science” because we can’t really ever know what nonhumans are thinking and feeling. How wrong they have turned out to be.

What goes around comes around and currently, the fields of ethology and cognitive ethology are rapidly growing in terms of the number of researchers engaged in this sort of research and also in the scope of the species they study and the questions they ask.¹ This is because the data they generate are highly relevant to what’s happening in the minds and hearts of these animals.

When I think about what it takes to collect detailed data on the behavior of other animals that bear on their abilities to think and feel, I immediately understand we must get over ourselves and I think of what I call “Soft Personal Rewilding“—deeply connecting with nature as we study these animals because it’s often easy, cheap, and accessible. What could be better? Formal research in these areas also can be far less costly than studies that depend on studying captive animals who might not be able to express what they know and what they’re thinking and feeling where they’re being studied.

Cognitive ethology expands the biodiversity of sentience and consciousness

Learning about the behavior, minds, and hearts of other animals surely is an eclectic endeavor. The fascinating array of animals in whom we’re interested, the incredibly diverse patterns of behavior they display, and the enormous range of the problems nonhumans faced clearly and forcefully argue for a broad transdisciplinary approach in which people work together, as we move on toward peaceful coexistence and the end of horrific global animal abuse once and for all.

When we pay careful attention to what other animals are telling us about what they want, need, think, and feel and do something about it’s a win-win for all. In a book called Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves, NYU’s Dr. Jeff Sebo argues that ample science shows what harms them (other animals) also harms us and we must pay close attention to this important and unavoidable double-edged sword.

It’s time to celebrate animal sentience and stop squabbling. Animal sentience isn’t science fiction. and the important question is not if sentience has evolved but why.

We can, and we must do better. Solid science—cognitive ethology, evolutionary biology, comparative psychology, animal studies—and a dose of common sense can lead the way. Surely, it’s time to stop wondering if other animals are sentient—they clearly are. Cognitive ethology can clearly lead the way.