Advanced Animal Behavior
A graduate-level survey from MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences department on ethological approaches to natural behavior patterns and their laboratory analysis. The course draws on field biology, including mammology and primatology, alongside sociobiology and comparative psychology to explain how researchers study behavior across species. Mammalian behavior gets the most attention, but the material also covers major findings from other vertebrates and invertebrates. Later sections connect this behavioral knowledge to neuropsychology and behavioral pharmacology, showing how ethological data feeds into brain science and drug research. Delivered through MIT OpenCourseWare, the course provides the standard materials for the format: readings, lecture notes, and assignments suited to graduate study, free to access and reuse under a Creative Commons license. No certificate is offered, consistent with OCW's self-study model.