Skills and ethology (study of animal behaviour)
The approach developed here is complementary to much of the research in
ethology. In short, skills are the unobservable component that cause
behaviour patterns to be repeatable within individuals and common across
individuals within the species.
Research into skills, as envisaged here, is more likely to focus on common
components of behaviours, and to avoid complexity and peculiarity as much as
possible. Ethologist are more likely to study 'interesting' observable
behaviour patterns by comparison across individuals within a species and by
comparisons across species.
A Wikipedia article on ethology lists 6 topics (among others):
- Fixed action patterns and animal communication
- For skills, we differentiate between the action component and the perception component.
- Instinct
- We refer to this as skills that are innate, hereditary, and encoded in DNA.
- Learning
- The Wikipedia article differentiates between imprinting and imitation.
- We differentiate between mimicry (which would include imprinting and imitation), and discovery.
- Mating and the fight for supremacy
- We consider mating rituals and competitions as group-level skill-sets.
- Living in groups (also discussed as collective animal behaviour)
- We consider this as part of group-level skill-sets, with information exchange to coordinate behaviours.
In other words, we would theorize that ethology studies the behaviour patters or actions that are caused by skills. Ethology focuses on the observable behaviour, and skills focuses on the underlying stored representation.
- Neuroethology may have considerable overlap with the study of skills.
Because of the focus on skill representation, there is also a focus on skill information passing from generation to generation.
