Acting on instinct.

This article focuses on the book "Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology," by Richard W. Burkhardt. The book is not a dry factual biography of a scientific discipline, but a fascinating and often entertaining account of the life and work of some of ethology's key figures. Burkhardt has done a tremendous job, meticulously analysing and describing the rise of ethology. He consulted a multitude of written sources and interviewed many of the important players. The development of ethology has been greatly influenced by the different personalities involved. Nowhere is this shown more clearly than in the relationship between the two key figures in the field, Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen. The characters of these two men could hardly have been more different. Whereas Lorenz was vain, self-centred, an extrovert and a self-styled philosopher, Tinbergen was modest, an introvert and an empiricist. Lorenz characterized himself as a "farmer," who mainly observed the domesticated birds that he kept around his own house,