Ethology

Ethology is the study of animal behaviour with a special attention to the natural environment and physiological, evolutionary aspects. The term was coined from the French éthologie by the zoologist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

An earlier, slightly different sense of the term, however, was proposed by John Stuart Mill in his 1843 System of Logic. He recommended the development of a new science, "ethology," whose purpose would be the explanation of individual and national differences in character, on the basis of associationistic psychology. This use of the word was never adopted, however.