Whom Must we Educate? Everyone!

The Problem:I think that the profession of Animal Behavior is in deep trouble and is in danger of disappearing as a viable scientific field unless we take some prompt action. Twenty-five years ago, E. O. Wilson in Sociobiology, predicted that by the end of this century Ethology or Animal Behavior would be replaced by the twin disciplines of Behavioral Ecology and Neuroscience. At the time I was angered by this prediction, but, sadly, the prediction was all too accurate. In terms of the Scientific Impact Index, the journals Behavioral Neuroscience, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, and Behavior Ecology, all rank well ahead of Animal Behaviour, the Journal of Comparative Psychology, Behaviour, and Ethology. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find and create academic positions for Ph.D.'s in Animal Behavior. Even my own department with a strong history of comparative psychology and animal behavior and which is making an effort to hire 5 new people in Biological Psychology views as "animal behavior" studies involving hormonal manipulations and c-fos immunocytochemistry. At a national level funding for high level research in animal behavior has become increasingly difficult to obtain, with competing interests from animal learning, behavioral ecology and behavioral neurosciences.

Yet courses in animal behavior have high enrollments and are very popular. We have many bright and well-qualified applicants for graduate school and many outstanding Ph.D. students. Natural history programs involving the behavior of animals are extremely popular among television viewers as are popular magazines of natural history. Where then have we gone wrong? Why are we facing such difficulties?

I place the locus of the problem among ourselves, and I see the basic problem as one of education. Virtually all of the other presentations in this symposium have demonstrated exciting programs for reaching pre-college students, improving instruction at the college level and communicating effectively with the general public whether they visit zoos or are pet owners. However, we must think of education as a 360 degree process, not only educating those whom we traditionally consider our "pupils" but also those who are our managers and supervisors. Department chairs and personnel committees, university deans and other administrators, federal science administrators and ultimately Congress must also be the targets of our educational efforts.

This is an effort that requires both individual and collective effort. Much of what is needed can be done by a scientific society that has as a goal the improvement of the image of animal behavior and can articulate the scientific value of our profession more effectively. But just as much as the efforts of a professional and dedicated Animal Behavior Society Executive Committee, we need the efforts of individuals. Below, I will present an example of one problem and its partial solution, and then I will present a multi-faceted framework for more effective marketing of our science, and finally, I will try to provide some concrete suggestions for us to follow.

An Example:In 1993 I was invited to be part of a review committee for the Integrative Biology programs at the National Science Foundation. There were five program areas including Animal Behavior. It quickly became apparent that there were great disparities in funding levels for different programs. I tried to find an appropriate metric for comparison, and settled on dollars available per grant submitted. This metric provides a means of measuring demand for funding within a program and the amount of funding available. By this measure Animal Behavior was receiving $30,000 per grant submitted compared with values ranging from $70,000 to over $100,000 per grant submitted in other programs.

Let me explain the consequences of this. If I submit a grant for three years with $60,000 direct costs peryear and 50% indirect costs, my total budget will be $270,000 for three years. Thus, if my grant is to be funded fully by Animal Behavior 8 other grant applications must be rejected. In contrast in a program with $90,000 per grant submitted, only 2 grants need to be rejected to fund mine. The consequences for Animal Behavior are both higher rates of rejection and lower levels of funding for grants that are approved.

When I explained this to the program officers and the Assistant Director for Biological Sciences at NSF, I was told that our field didn't need anything more than stopwatches and clipboards, so the funding levels were appropriate! We clearly have not communicated the sophistication of our science. In my own research I make use of signal analysissoftware and hardware, enzyme-linked immunoassays, high pressure liquid chromatography among other things, and this says nothing of the personnel time that is needed for careful, accurate behavioral observations. We need to communicate more effectively about our needs for high quality personnel and sophisticated equipment.

In 1998, Jane Brockmann was a member of the next review team for Integrative Biology, and independently she made similar calculations of dollars per grant submitted. Five years after my visit, the funding in Animal Behavior had dropped by 23% to $23,000 per grant submitted, while the other programs remained at high levels. We hadn't actually lost money, but an increase in the numbers of grants submitted reduced the average amount available.

The Animal Behavior Society along with the International Society of Behavioral Ecology, and the Section on Animal Behavior of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology responded quickly with a letter to the Assistant Director for Biological Sciences and followed this up with a visit to Washington. This lead an unprecedented increase in the budget for Animal Behavior of 25%.

Great success? It depends. Yes we received an increase of $1.2 million or 25% to about $6 million a year, but in fiscal year 1999, the dollars per submitted grant is $30,600 slightly ahead of 1993 levels. We are back where we started!

Two Dilemmas:Many of the participants in the Education Symposium have pointed out how accessible Animal Behavior is to pre-college students and the general public. It appears to be easy; something everyone can do. But by making our science sound easy and accessible to the general public, we make it sound trivial, non-serious or minimally-scientific to university and science administrators. How can we effectively portray our science as sophisticated and highly technical on the one hand and as simple and accessible on the other hand?

Since our focus is on the behavior of nonhuman animals, yet most of the general public are primarily supportive of research that improves the human condition, how can we link our research to results that provide value to humans.

Marketing: I see six areas in which we can work to be more effective in marketing the value of Animal Behavior in ways that will be perceived as improving the human condition: entertainment, conservation and the environment, applied animal behavior, technology transfer, health issues, and as a corrective influence on biomedical research. I will discuss each of these in turn.

1. Entertainment:Animal Behavior is entertaining. Millions of people visit zoos each year, more than attend all paid sporting events, and many millions watch natural history programs on television, read about animal behavior in newspapers or magazines. However, the way in which animal behavior is presented to the public almost always fails to portray the scientific underpinnings. Let me give an example.

I have had a long-running argument with producers at the BBC with respect to portraying science in their otherwise excellent programs. One producer has tried for years to get footage of the cotton-top tamarins that I study. These cooperatively-breeding monkeys are characterized by, among other things, a high degree of male care of infants. These monkeys are highly endangered and native to Northern Colombia. We had footage of a wild male carrying twin infants on the first day after birth which was rejected by the BBC because the male was marked so that we could identify him in our field study. This made the footage "unnatural" to the BBC. After several years of discussion, I finally relented and allowed the BBC to film my captive monkeys whichare unmarked. The producer rented vegetation at a local nursery and created a "jungle-like" backdrop for filming captive monkeys. These faked shots were more acceptable to the BBC than footage of wild animals, because they would not have to explain the scientific reasons behind the need to mark wild animals. A different BBC producer told me that she made films her "Mum" could understand, and I replied that she might be underestimating her mum's intelligence.

Just imagine the damage that is done when Sir David Attenborough can lead us on film into a beautiful display of behaving animals without a hint of the months and, probably, years of research that someone invested in studying the population so that the film could be made. If Sir David can see so many animals so easily, then this must be something virtually anyone can do. Just recently, ABSNet received a posting from a producer for Sir David's new program on the Life of Mammals, asking for locations where an animal might be touched or contacted by Sir David. Not only does this type of program trivialize our science, but it leads viewers to think that wild animals are soft and cuddly things that should be touched and petted by humans!

We have a great opportunity to communicate with the general public about animal behavior through entertainment, but we need to maintain some control over the messages that are conveyed both about the accuracy of the behavior depicted in the film, and the rigor of the science that underlies what is portrayed to the public.

2. Conservation and the Environment:Animal Behavior has not reached its potential for what it can contribute to conservation and environmental monitoring. Disruptions of reproductive behavior, for example, might be early bioindicators of the presence of endocrine disruptors influencing a population, and these behavioral indicators are frequently less disruptive to observe than capturing and taking blood samples from wild animals.

One panacea promised for conservation is ecotourism that provides income for the local human population as well as a motivation for habitat preservation. But what if ecotourism affects animals negatively? My colleague, Stella de la Torre, has recently completed a study of pygmy marmosets in the Ecuadoran Amazon and in comparing a population with a high degree of ecotourism with a population isolated from most human influences, she found many significant behavioral differences. The monkeys in areas with higher ecotourism spent more time at higher levels in the forest and showed decreased rates of social play. An indirect result of tourism was the capture of one monkey from each of two groups and this led to decreased observability and decreased rates of social communication. Furthermore, over a two year period there were significantly fewer infants born and a lower rate of surviving infants in the population exposed to ecotourism. A two year survey to document reproductive decline is a major investment in time and effort, but briefer observations of strata use, social behavior and vocalizations could provide an early warning of environmental disruption on animals.

Conservation biologists often develop managementplans for species in the absence of basic behavioral data. How one manipulates a population will depend critically on knowing, for example, whether males or females are the major dispersing sex, knowing aspects about timing of mating and the responses of a group to novel intruders. Simple translocation of animals from one place to another could be disastrous for the population if done in the absence of extensive knowledge of behavior. My colleague, Karen Strier, studies endangered monkeys in Brazil, and she has prepared a lecture on twenty reasons why her species would be extinct if traditional management practices were applied. Animal Behavior has much to contribute to thoughtful management of animal populations for conservation, yet I find little behavioral research published in conservation biology journals, and the Animal Behavior Society seems to pay lip service to conservation by holding a symposium every ten years or so and ignoring conservation behavioral biology the rest of the time.

We have another important role to play in captive breeding and reproduction. The successful display of animals in captivity depends on careful understanding of the natural behavior of animals and creating opportunities for this behavior to be expressed in captivity. Weneed to discover what animals must learn before we reintroduce captive animals to the wild. For example, there is evidence that monkeys must learn predator recognition skills. Rhesus macaques and cotton-top tamarins, among others, do not have "innate" predator recognition skills, but must be exposed to other monkeys expressing appropriately fearful behavior to a potential predator. Learning occurs rapidly, but nonetheless, learning is needed. Similarly animals to be reintroduced may need to develop appropriate sensory and motor skills and may have to learn foraging skills and learn to distinguish between safe and toxic foods.

3. Applied Animal Behavior:With millions of pet owners in North America and millions of visitors to zoos coupled with concerns about the well-being of animals involved in research, Animal Behavior has the potential to make important contributions. Our members are already active and visible in providing advice to people on how to manage their pets most effectively. Many behavioral problems emerging between owners and pets can be treated effectively by professionally trained animal behaviorists.

The increasing concerns about the well-being of animals in research and in agriculture has led to the proposal of a variety of standards and regulations governing the use of animals. Many of these are developed primarily from a veterinary health or engineering perspective assuming that if cage sizes are proper, food and drink are nutritious and sanitary and the appropriate lighting and ventilation conditions are in place, all will be well. Many initial drafts of animal care standards ignored the behavioral needs of animals. There is a relatively small cohort of animal behaviorists developing more humane, behaviorally-appropriate ways to house animals used in farming and agriculture. In the development of regulations governing the use of animals in research, priority was given to having a veterinarian as a voting member of every Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, but no requirement for anyone with behavioral expertise. We are missing an important opportunity to provide the benefits of our scientific knowledge to provide behaviorally sound basis for housing and working with research animals. Fortunately, a recent document on the Psychological Well-Being of Captive Nonhuman Primates from the National Research Council advises thorough knowledge about the natural behavior of a species as a necessity for developing appropriate captive environments.

I think that most zoos have long realized the value of exhibiting animals in environments that allow the animals to express a broad range of appropriate behavior. Animal behaviorists have made important contributions to the design and exhibit of animals in zoos and have done much to emphasize the behavior exhibited by animals and to educate the public about the behavior that can be observed.

4. Technology Transfer:Second only to health in public interest for research contributions is research that improves technology. Here it is perhaps most difficult to see how Animal Behavior might contribute, but I think if we think creatively, we can find some potential contributions. It was animal behavior research that demonstrated the use of ultrasound and weak electrical fields as sensory systems that certain animals use for imaging their environment, and the development of ultrasound and weak electric fields has been used to image parts of the human body otherwise inaccessible, to examine equipment and metals for potential structural problems, and in many other applications. I cannot document a direct connection between the discovery of how bats use ultrasound to image their worlds and the development of sonagraphy for medical diagnosis, but I suspect there must be some connection. There is currently interest in development of odor detection analysis equipment for pollution monitoring that might benefit from understanding animal olfactory systems.

Animal motor control systems have played important roles in engineering. The principle of reafferance developed inanimals has important applications in servo-control systems in engineering. I have heard that the engineers that developed Velcro used the structure of feet of geckos that can climb walls and walk across ceilings as their inspiration. Our discovery and documentation of a diversity of sensory and motor systems among animals can provide promising insights for technology development.

Another area of current interest is complex self-organizing and self-regulating systems, and here work by animal behaviorists on the organization of colonies of social insects can provide important insights for how a bottom-up self-organizing system might emerge from seemingly random actions. I think we are just beginning to think about possible technological benefits of our studies and that this will be an important area for future development.

5. Health Issues: Perhaps the gold mine of scientific funding today is in health-related research. The National Institutes of Health have experienced major budget increases over the past few years, and the National Institute of Mental Health which 6 years ago created a program on "Comparative Approaches to Brain and Behavior" has had a doubling of funding in the past 3-4 years. There is a strong push by psychologists to have research on behavioral aspects of disease represented in each of the Institutes, not just mental health.

We can contribute to health-related research in several ways and can target many of our studies toward the goals of NIH. Animal models have been used extensively to study stress and behavioral dysfunction, but until recently, only a few model species have been used and most researchers have used artificial behavioral models. Thus, a major model for understanding the neurobiology of fear is a shock-induced startle response. One of our major contributions can be in expanding the diversity of research models by developing examples of how animals manage behavioral problems in their natural environments as areas for improving on traditional methods. We can illustrate the importance of using natural behaviors and a broader range of model species to improve understanding of research areas important to human health and well-being. Let me give just a few examples.

There has been a great concern about high levels of aggressionand violence in our society, but relatively little attention given to reconciliation and peace-keeping. Different animal species express aggression to different degrees, some appearing completely pacific while others are quite aggressive. Understanding the ecological and evolutionary forces that select for high and low levels of aggression as well as understanding developmental influences that moderate expression of aggression could prove quite useful. Recent studies of reconciliation and relationship repair in monkeys and apes have provided impetus for studies of reconciliation in humans.

With more families having two working parents, we need to understand how to manage infant care in new ways. How do fathers become involved in infant care, and what are the effects of multiple non-family caregivers on infant development. Studies of cooperatively-breeding birds and mammals might provide important insights on how to increase male involvement in care of human infants, as well as leading to an understanding ofbehavioral and physiological mechanisms involved.

Studies of development of communication, mainly in songbirds, have been extremely influential in developing models for understanding how language develops in children, and understanding disordered communication. In general, studies of cognition and communication abilities, and the development of these abilities in nonhuman animals can have direct relevance for understanding human development. I could expand this list much further but will stop with these examples.

In addition, studies of nonhuman animals have provided the basis for showing the bi- directionality of control between physiology and behavior. Our research has shown how the quality of social environments can influence stress physiology and even affect the immune system. Both neuropeptides and gonadal steroid hormone production can be influenced by aspects of an organism's social and physical environment. Finally, recent evolutionary models of disease have been developed by animal behaviorists and their colleagues and these will have important influences on understanding disease transmission generally, well beyond those diseases or disorders that involve behavioral components.

6. Corrective Influence on Biomedical Research:This area is technically a corollary to the section on health issues, but I think it is important enough to be emphasized separately. Several years ago when I was President of the Animal Behavior Society and trying to educate science administrators in Washington about the value of Animal Behavior research, I had a brief debate with the Research Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He was quite proud of a book that had been written extolling the value of brain research that initiated the Decade of the Brain. I pointed out that the word "behavior" was mentioned nowhere in the text. He countered by asking how one could have behavior without a brain, and my rejoinder was that one can't ask interesting questions about the brain without knowing about behavior. There isa clear interconnection between brain and behavior, and Animal Behavior is perhaps the best science to focus attention on this interaction. However, as we divide increasingly into Neuroscientists and Behavior Ecologists, we are losing track of this intimate connection. Many, if not most, behavioral ecologists are unconcerned about mechanisms and most neuroscientists are so engrossed by studies of cellular or molecular function that they have lost track of the more important value of their cells in behavior.

The Human Genome Project has attracted great attention and nearly each week we learn of some new gene that has been identified to correlate with some health problem: alcoholism, breast cancer, schizophrenia. But lost in the flurry of excitement over genetic discoveries is the issue of how and when genes become expressed. Frequently it is environmental or social events that are important for gene expression. If we document the entire human genome, we will have learned very little unless we have equivalent funding for understanding mechanisms of gene expression. There is a very important role that Animal Behavior can play. For example, many exciting things are being done with transgenic and knock-out mice, but if behavior is looked at all in these preparations, the tasks used are often primitive and frequently lack appropriate controls. We have the expertise to correct this.

Animal Behavior can contribute to the development of greater diversity of research tasks and research models. Biomedical researchers are frequently ignorant about the interaction of early development and brain function or gene expression, yet these are areas where Animal Behavior can make an important contribution. For example, my colleague Catherine Marler has been studying two species of mice, one is polygynous, non-territorial and only females care for infants; the other species is monogamous, territorial and males are very involved in infant care. By cross-fostering mice of each species with foster parents of the other, Marler has shown that the species-typical behavior can be altered. Furthermore, cross-fostered animals develop brain distributions of neuropeptides similar to those of their foster fathers. Thus not only is behavior being altered through early social experience, but the brain is being remodelled. This example illustrates the importance of early social experience as well as illustrating the value of the comparative method and focussing on natural, functional behaviors. One final contribution is that Animal Behavior recognizes the importance of individual variation within a species. Most normative science seeks to provide explanations for the average member of a population. But one could argue that a mature science is one that understands individual variation within a species. Animal Behavior has the models and the methods for studying individual variation in behavior. Each of these are examples of important contributions from Animal Behavior that should have a fundamental influence on how biomedical research is conceptualized and carried out.

Solutions?I have argued that our profession faces serious problems and that it is in danger of disappearing. We need to educate the general public, our university and science administrators and our elected officials about the significance of our science. We have greater difficulty than most other sciences, because our research seems superficially to be much more accessible and transparent than that of other fields. While this is a blessing in terms of developing education programs for most people, it is deadly when we try to convince those in charge of making decisions about our staffing or funding.

We need to work much harder at getting others to take us seriously. This means we need to take ourselves seriously. We can't just be a group of good old folks who get together once a year to exchange information and have a good time. We need to be sure that we nominate and elect officers who are committed to work for the betterment of Animal Behavior, and we need to provide these officers with ideas, with time, with praise and support for what they do.

We need to play better with others. I've mentioned a variety of disciplines where I think Animal Behavior can make an important contribution, but we tend to be exclusive and limited in our focus rather than inclusive and broad. We need regular contacts with conservation biologists, behavioral endocrinologists, neuroethologists, applied animal behaviorists, physical anthropologists, comparative psychologists, geneticists. One mechanism wouldbe to broaden the range of symposia at our annual meetings to be sure that at least one cross-disciplinary symposium is held each year, and to suggest programs involving behavior to the program committees of related scientific societies.

It is clear that we need to have regular communication with science administrators in Washington, not only at NSF but at NIMH, USDA, EPA and other agencies where our work might prove useful. Someone representing the Animal Behavior Society should be visiting key science administrators at least once a year to talk about the latest significant work our members have done. This has important reciprocal benefits. I had dinner shortly before the ABS Meeting with two program officers at NIH who complained that scientific societies often did not back them up when they needed help to promote new initiatives within their agencies. It is important to locate the science administrators most sympathetic to our research and not only ask them to help us, but to be willing to volunteer to help them when they need assistance.

We need to develop a broad mission statement of the significance, past accomplishments and future promise of our research, and develop this in a way that touches on the six marketing areas that I have listed above. Fortunately, Andrew Sih has made this a goal of his term as ABS President.

Much of what I have listed so far as solutions are organizational solutions, but we should not depend on ABS to solve our problems alone. As individuals we need to be active too. Wecan volunteer to be on our own Institutional Animal Care Committees so that a behavioral perspective is represented. We should seize every opportunity to talk about our work to local schools, civic groups and in other public venues. We should insist that filmmakers and journalists mention the scientific importance of our work and not just focus on the "cute" story. We need to communicate how our research is built around hypothesis formation and testing and how sophisticated our research methods are. We each of us need to think carefully to be able to articulate the importance of what we do. When I was a first year graduate student, one of our professors told us that we should always be prepared to explain our research to our grandmothers. I dismissed his remark, but that November when I went home for Thanksgiving and was sitting at the table with all my relatives, my grandmother asked me what I was doing in graduate school. I gave a technical explanation and she asked why a smart boy like me was wasting my time on such a project. I quickly worked through a different explanation of why this seemingly insignificant research might indeed be useful, and satisfied my grandmother. Never again will I be without an explanation in lay terms for why my research is important. We each need to be prepared to communicate at any time about the value of our research.

Only if our Society grows and broadens its connections to other disciplines and to science administrators, only if we can articulate a clear mission statement and list of accomplishments that lead to the improvement of the human condition, only if each of us is constantly aware of the need to educate everyone we meet: family, friends, students, administrators, journalists, will we have any chance of being taken seriously and remaining relevant. This is going to be a time consuming and difficult task, but I am convinced it is something we each must do. For if we don't take action, Animal Behavior WILL become extinct!