Customer Reviews

Niko's Nature: The Life of Niko Tinbergen and His Science of Animal Behaviour

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My review first posted on my blog: [...]

Niko's Nature, by Hans Kruuk, is the most impassionate biography I've read to date - regardless of the subject's occupation or importance.

Kruuk sucessfully orchestrates compelling accounts of the life, personality, and famous research of the Maestro (Tinbergen's affectionate title bestowed by his graduate students).

For those not in the know, Niko Tinbergen was one of the four men awarded a Nobel Prize in 1973 for his contributions as a founding father of the science now referred to as ethology, or animal behavior (before his work, ethology had a different meaning amongst zoologists and biologists). His field work studying gull and tern behavior laid the foundation for his concepts and theories of modern ethology.

Although Tinbergen's work has been criticized, reviewed, and revised, and occasionally dismissed throughout the years, his influence spans wide. It is not difficult to admit that without the alliance of Niko Tinbergen with his equally-renowned collegue and friend, Konrad Lorenz, the field of modern ethology would probably look nothing like how it does today.

A recipient of several distinguishing awards and honors, one of Tinbergen's greatest honors is to have such a well-written and interesting biography in his namesake. Kruuk, one of Tinbergen's Ph.D. students during his Oxford teaching years, gives a very personal account of the Maestro's being and presence. One of the most difficult things to put into words is an accurate account of someone's personality, especially from an early age to their death.

Lively photographs and pictures are icing on the cake. Every single image is relevant in its placement within the book. Included are several of Tinbergen's own photographs and drawings which is a plus, considering that photography and drawing were two of his best-known skills (along with ice skating, writing, and film-making in his later years).

Any student of ethology, biology, or underwater basket weaving should get a copy of this book and read it. Be inspired by the life of a great researcher and understand the awe that can be inspired via superbly-composed nonfiction.

Overall: 5/5 - Probably worth a second read; good addition to your bookshelf

Niko Tinbergen was one of three ethologists to win the Nobel Prize and of the three he was perhaps the most interesting. A born animal observer, there was little doubt about where his interests tended from very early age. The other two Nobel winners, Karl Von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz were Austrian and German, respectively, while Tinbergen was Dutch. As such he was interned by the Nazi's, while Von Frisch was harassed for not following Hitler and Lorenz became a collaborator with the Nazi government and a member of the Nazi Party. The latter acts caused a deep rift between Lorenz and Tinbergen, who had been to a large degree a disciple of Lorenz. This carried on in later contact which, while cordial, was strained. On one occasion Lorenz took issue with Tinbergen's partial agreement with Danny Lehrman, who had criticized both Lorenz's and Tinbergen's collaborative work. Tinbergen had merely acknowledged some of the criticism by Lehrman (and also Schneirla) had some basis and that "instinct" and "learning" were not at all easy to separate.

These and many other aspects of the life of Niko Tinbergen are well covered in "Niko's Nature: The Life of Niko Tinbergen and his Science of Animal Behaviour" by Hans Kruuk, one of Tinbergen's students. This is a very well done biography of a complex man, who on one hand designed brilliant studies of gulls, wasps, and other organisms, and on the other fell into major errors of judgement. He was in fact quite human, very conservative about bringing up his and his wife's children, yet very liberal politically to the point of socialism. His Nobel Prize speech was a total disaster because he used it to inadvisedly praise a questionable idea on autism. On the other hand he often refused to defend himself when attacked. In other words he was a fallible human being and in this regard quite likable

Still he was a pioneer in a new field that has born fruit in modern evolutionary behavioral studies. It is certainly to his credit that he saw some of the flaws in his and Lorenz's work, despite their close early colaborations. I only wish that Lorenz had been as open to criticism!

I recommend this book highly as a great introduction to the thought of Tinbergen and other ethologists and of the times during which it developed.