Discuss Tinbergen's Four Causes Of Behavior

Nikolas Tinbergen’s 4 causes of behavior are a framework that can be taken to understand animal behavior. The 4 causes are Triggering Cause, Development, Function, and Evolution. Through these 4 aspects, we can investigate the monkey species’ behavior. The first cause is the Triggering Cause. In other words, what exactly drove the monkey to produce such a call? The scientists that are studying this must investigate what exactly causes this call, for example if it is based on what type of food the monkey has discovered, the smell, the surroundings, the color, etc. A way to research the triggering cause is to introduce the monkeys to different new food sources with different characteristics and identify which characteristics of the food source
Or is it innate?” These questions all have to be taken into consideration. The development of this behavior can be studied by raising a number of these monkeys in isolation and see if they exhibit this behavior later on. The 3rd cause is the Function. Function in this case means why the monkeys produce the call. What is the purpose of producing a food call sound? Is it to mark its territory? Or is it to signal to the rest of pack that it has found a new food source? It is more difficult to investigate what is the function. A scientist might produce a series of possibilities and then experiment to see which is the case. For example, the scientists would observe the monkey making the food call and see what would happen next. Do more monkeys go to the food source after the first monkey produced the call? Or little to no monkeys go to the food source after the food call is produced? After observing the monkeys for a longer period of time, the scientists can confirm which one of their assumptions were correct based on which scenario happened more. The 4th cause is the Evolution of this behavior. The 4th cause is used to determine why a behavior has lasted throughout the evolution of this