Douglas Spalding facts for kids

Douglas Alexander Spalding (1841–1877) was an English biologist. He helped start the study of ethology, which is about animal behavior. People didn't fully understand how important his work was until much later.

Douglas Spalding was born in London in 1841. He started his career as a workman. Later, he moved near Aberdeen and took free classes. He studied philosophy and literature. After a year, he went back to London. Spalding began training to be a lawyer, but he became sick with tuberculosis.

He traveled around Europe, hoping to get better. In Avignon, he met a famous thinker named John Stuart Mill. Through Mill, he met John Russell, Viscount Amberley. Viscount Amberley's father was Lord John Russell, a former British Prime Minister. Spalding became a tutor for Viscount Amberley's children. One of his students might have been a very young Bertrand Russell, who later became a famous philosopher. After Viscount Amberley passed away in 1876, Spalding went back to Europe. He died there the next year.

What is Ethology?

Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior. It looks at how animals act in their natural environments. Ethologists study why animals do what they do, and how these behaviors help them survive.

Spalding's Discoveries

Spalding did some amazing experiments on animal behavior. He discovered something called imprinting. Imprinting is a special type of learning that happens very early in an animal's life. For example, a baby bird might learn to follow the first moving object it sees, usually its mother.

Spalding's ideas about imprinting were later rediscovered by Oskar Heinroth. Then, scientists like Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen studied and shared these ideas with more people.

Instinct and Inherited Behavior

Spalding was one of the first to scientifically study instinct and imprinting. He showed that some behaviors are instinctive. This means animals are born knowing how to do them, without needing to learn or practice.

For example, Spalding proved that baby chicks could behave normally right after hatching. They did this even if they had no experience or information from their senses. This showed that these behaviors were inherited or passed down through genes.

In 1954, a scientist named J.B.S. Haldane reprinted Spalding's important essay On Instinct. This helped show how important Spalding's work was for the history of ethology.

How Instincts Evolve

Some people believe Spalding was the first to suggest an idea called genetic assimilation. He thought that instincts might start from learned behaviors. He argued that if individuals who were good at learning survived better, over time, the learned behavior could become an instinct. This means the behavior would eventually appear without any learning at all.