24 Facts About Niko Tinbergen

Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning the organization and elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns in animals.

Niko Tinbergen is regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior.

Niko Tinbergen studied biology at Leiden University and was a prisoner of war during World War II.

Niko Tinbergen explains how behaviour can be considered a combination of these spontaneous behaviour patterns and as set series of reactions to particular stimuli.

Niko Tinbergen added complexity to this model, a model now known as Niko Tinbergen's hierarchical model.

Related searches

Niko Tinbergen suggested that motivational impulses build up in nervous centres in the brain which are held in check by blocks.

Niko Tinbergen showed that honey bees show curiosity for yellow and blue paper models of flowers, and suggested that these were visual stimuli causing the buildup of energy in one specific centre.

Niko Tinbergen envisioned this as concluding the reaction set for honey bee feeding behaviour.

Niko Tinbergen stated that their revival of the "watching and wondering" approach to studying behaviour could indeed contribute to the relief of human suffering.

Niko Tinbergen caused some intrigue by dedicating a large part of his acceptance speech to FM Alexander, originator of the Alexander technique, a method which investigates postural reflexes and responses in human beings.

In 1950 Niko Tinbergen became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Niko Tinbergen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961, the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1974, and the American Philosophical Society in 1975.

Niko Tinbergen was awarded the Godman-Salvin Medal in 1969 by the British Ornithologists' Union, and in 1973 received the Swammerdam Medal and Wilhelm Bolsche Medal .

Niko Tinbergen described four questions he believed should be asked of any animal behaviour, which were:.

Major body of Niko Tinbergen's research focused on what he termed the supernormal stimulus.

Niko Tinbergen constructed plaster eggs to see which a bird preferred to sit on, finding that they would select those that were larger, had more defined markings, or more saturated colour—and a dayglo-bright one with black polka dots would be selected over the bird's own pale, dappled eggs.

Niko Tinbergen found that territorial male three-spined stickleback would attack a wooden fish model more vigorously than a real male if its underside was redder.

Niko Tinbergen constructed cardboard dummy butterflies with more defined markings that male butterflies would try to mate with in preference to real females.

Niko Tinbergen applied his observational methods to the problems of autistic children.

Niko Tinbergen recommended a "holding therapy" in which parents hold their autistic children for long periods of time while attempting to establish eye contact, even when a child resists the embrace.

Niko Tinbergen was a member of the advisory committee to the Anti-Concorde Project and was an atheist.

Niko Tinbergen married Elisabeth Rutten and they had five children.

Niko Tinbergen was treated by his friend, whose ideas he had greatly influenced, John Bowlby.

Niko Tinbergen died on 21 December 1988, after suffering a stroke at his home in Oxford, England.