How to Design Experiments in Animal Behaviour

In this series of articles, I will introduce the reader to the science of ethology, somewhat indirectly by describing simple experiments, both old and new, designed to understand how and why animals behave the way they do. My emphasis will be on the design of the experiments and my goal will be to motivate readers not only to think about the design but also to come up with alternatives and improvements. Motivated readers can indeed replicate some of these experiments even if they end up replacing the study animal or the behaviours of interest with their own favourite choices. In the first part of the series, I describe how Niko Tinbergen — Nobel Laureate and one of the founding fathers of ethology (the science of animal behaviour) — designed remarkably simple experiments to successfully understand how digger wasps find their own nests in a complex habitat also consisting nests built by other wasps.