Ethogram:
You can think of an ethogram as a foreign-language dictionary for an entire species that covers actions as well as sounds. The concept dates back to the mid-20th century, when pioneering ethologists like Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz drew up the first ones for species whose behaviour they thought of as innate and stereotypical – mainly insects, birds and fish. Several now exist for the mouse, that staple of laboratory research. But intelligent, socially complex animals represent a much greater challenge, and you can count the number of ethograms that cover them on the fingers of one hand. For cetaceans, there is a book called The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins. For chimpanzees, says Whiten, the most comprehensive one is probably another book called Chimpanzee Behavior in the Wild. And now there is the Elephant Ethogram. [“Do you speak elephant? With this new dictionary you will,” Laura Spinney, NewScientist (6 November 2021, paywall)]
