Australian People and Animals in Today's Dreamtime: The Role of Comparative Psychology in the Management of Natural Resources

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This collection of papers was presented at the 1988 biennial conference of the International Society for Comparative Psychology in Australia, and it underlines how comparative psychology can help confront global environmental problems by analyzing and comparing the behaviour of humans and animals. This often complex relationship is clarified as each contributor examines a particular aspect relating to the ecology of Australia. The continuities and discontinuities in the evolutionary patterns of animal species, the impact of human knowledge and the use of animals on the ecological balance, and the need for collaborative efforts to effect change figure prominently in the study. Much of the reported work in this volume details data collected from aboriginal sources which trace the behaviour development of many native species. Althought this book focuses on Australia, its content is applicable on a much wider scale.

Author Bio

David B. Croft is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where he teaches General Biology and Animal Behaviour. He graduated from Flinders University in South Australia with a University Medal and gained his PhD at the University of Cambridge in England. He has published numerous papers on the behaviour of species as diverse as Australian ant-lions and Javan leaf-eating monkeys. Croft has been the President of the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Ethel Tobach, PhD, Curator Emerita at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, is the series editor of Advances in Comparative Psychology, publication of the International Society for Comparative Psychology and the University of Calabria. This series stresses the responsibility of comparative psychology to the people and natural resources of the countries in which their biennial international conferences take place. The first volume dealt with this responsibility as it applied to Costa Rica. This second volume resulted from the joint meeting of the Australian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour and the International Society for Comparative Psychology. The third volume will be concerned with similar issues in Barbados.