NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE 1973

INTRODUCTION:

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is administered by the Nobel Foundation, is

awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine. It
is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel. The Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded annually by the Swedish Karolinska Institute to
scientists and doctors in the various fields of physiology or medicine.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 was awarded jointly to Karl von Frisch,
Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen "for their discoveries concerning organization and
elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns".

According to research articles from Dewsbury, Donald A (2003), this was a landmark event
in the history of the field of ethology and potentially for the behavioral sciences more
broadly. For the first time, the prize was awarded for research of a purely behavioral nature.
The language used in making the award emphasized the implications of ethological work for
human health and appeared to suggest that more such awards might be forthcoming.

Karl Ritter von Frisch was an Austrian ethologist who works centered on investigations of
the sensory perceptions of the honey bee and he was one of the first to translate the meaning
of the waggle dance. His theory was disputed by other scientists and greeted with skepticism
at the time.

Konrad

Lorenz

was

an

Austrian zoologist, ethologist,

and ornithologist. He

studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working
with geese, he rediscovered the principle of imprinting which is originally described by
Douglas Spalding in the 19th century in the behavior of nidifugous birds.

Nikolaas Tinbergen was a Dutch ethologist and ornithologist. A major body of Tinbergen's
research focused on what he termed Supernormal Stimuli. This was the concept that one
could build an artificial object which was a stronger stimulus or releaser for an instinct than
the object for which the instinct originally evolved.
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KARL VON FRISCH

Karl von Frisch has devoted himself for more than sixty years to studies of the very
complicated behavior of European honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica). He has elucidated
what has rightly been called 'the language of bees'. When a bee has found flowers containing
nectar, it performs a special dance when returning to the hive. The dance informs the bees in
the hive of the existence of foods, often also about the direction where the flowers will be
found and about the distance to them. The foraging bee is able to indicate the direction of the
food source in relation to the sun by means of analyzing polarized, ultraviolet light from the
sky, light that is invisible to human. The honeybees do not learn, either to dance or to
understand the message of the dance. Both the dancing and the appropriate reactions to it are
genetically programmed behavior patterns.

In his research, Karl von Frisch was determined that bee had many perceptions such as sense
of smell. Frisch discovered that bees can distinguish various blossoming plants by their scent,
and that each bee is flower constants. Their sensitivity to a sweet taste is only slightly
stronger than in humans. Bee also had optical perceptions and had color vision. From his
research, bees cannot distinguish red from black (colorless), but they can distinguish the
colors white, yellow, blue and violet. Color pigments which reflect UV radiation expand the
spectrum of colors which can be differentiated. Bee also had a power of orientation. Frisch
also discovered that bees also had a power of orientation which can recognize the desired
compass direction in three different ways which by the sun, by the polarization pattern of the
blue sky, and by the earths magnetic field.

Frisch proved that variations in the position of the sun over the course of a day provided bees
with an orientation tool. Bees also have an internal clock with three different synchronization
or timekeeping mechanisms. Bees also have ability to identify what is vertical with the help
of their head used as a pendulum together with a ring of sensory cells in the neck.

Frinsch also identify communication of bees is a special dance and form in two dances which
are round dance and waggle dance. Round dance provides the information that there is a
feeding place in the vicinity of the beehive at a distance between 50 and 100 meters while
waggle dance is used to relay information about more distant food sources. The distance to
the food source is relayed by the speed of the dance, mean by the number of times the straight
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stretch is traversed per unit of time. The other bees take in the information by keeping in
close contact with the dancing bee and reconstructing its movements. They also receive
information via their sense of smell about what is to be found at the food source such as type
of food, pollen, propolis, or water as well as its specific characteristics.

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KONRAD LORENZ

Lorenz has been called 'The father of ethology', by Niko Tinbergen. Together with Nikolaas
Tinbergen, Lorenz developed the idea of an innate releasing mechanism to explain instinctive
behaviors named fixed action patterns.

Konrad Lorenz has studied among many other things the fixed action patterns of various
birds. His experiments with inexperienced animals such as young birds from an incubator, are
of great importance in this context. In these young birds he observed behavior patterns that
could not reasonably have been learnt but were to be interpreted as being genetically
programmed. He also found that experiences of young animals during a critical period could
be decisive for their future development. Newborn ducks and geese follow the first moving
object that they catch sight of, and later on they will follow those particular objects only.
Normally, they will follow their mother, but they may be seduced to follow almost any
moving object or creature. This phenomenon has been called imprinting.

Imprinting is the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any kind of phasesensitive learning which means learning occurring at a particular age or a particular life stage.
This process is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior. There are
two terms in imprinting which are filial imprinting and sexual imprinting.

Filial imprinting happen when a young animal acquires several of its behavioral
characteristics from its parent. It is most obvious in nidifugous birds, which imprint on their
parents and then follow them around. Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese
would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a critical
period between 1316 hours shortly after hatching. Lorenz also found that the geese could
imprint on inanimate objects.

Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the characteristics of a
desirable mate. According to Konrad Lorenzs geese theory, imprinting on shoes or boots of
geese would be the cause of shoe fetishism.

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NIKOLAAS TINBERGEN

Nikolaas Tinbergen is well known for originating the four questions he believed should be
asked

of

any

animal

development (Ontogeny),

behaviours,

which

evolution (phylogeny)

were
and

causation (mechanism),
function

(adaptation).

In ethology and sociobiology causation and ontogeny are summarized as the "proximate
mechanisms" and adaptation and phylogeny as the "ultimate mechanisms".

Nikolaas Tinbergen has to a large extent tested various hypotheses by means of

comprehensive, careful, and quite often ingenious experiments. Among other things, he has
used dummies to measure the strength of different key stimuli as regards their ability to elicit
corresponding fixed action patterns. He made the important observation that 'supernormal'
stimuli eliciting more intense behavior than those of natural conditions, may be produced by
exaggerating certain characteristics.

Supernormal stimuli was the concept that one could build an artificial object which was a
stronger stimulus or releaser for an instinct than the object for which the instinct originally
evolved. Tinbergen was constructed plaster eggs to see which a bird preferred to sit on,
finding that they would select those that were larger, had more defined markings, or more
saturated colorand a dayglo-bright one with black polka dots would be selected over the
bird's own pale, dappled eggs.

Tinbergen found that territorial male stickleback fish would attack a wooden fish model more
vigorously than a real male if its underside was redder. He constructed cardboard dummy
butterflies with more defined markings that male butterflies would try to mate with in
preference to real females. The superstimulus, by its exaggerations, clearly delineated what
characteristics were eliciting the instinctual response.

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CONCLUSION:

They have collected numerous data about animal behavior both in natural settings and in
experimental situations. Being biological scholars they leave also studied the functions of
behavior patterns, their role in the individual struggle for life and for the continuation of the
species. Thus, behavior patterns have stood out as results of natural selection just as
morphological characteristics and physiological functions.
It is of fundamental importance that some behavior patterns evidently are genetically
programmed. The so-called fixed action patterns do not request any previous experience. In
insects, fishes and birds, such important procedures as courtship, nesting and taking care of
the brood, to a large extent consist in fixed action patterns. With developments of the brain
hemispheres, behavior has become increasingly modifiable and dependent on learning in
mammals and especially in man, but fixed action patterns still play an important role.

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REFERENCES:

Dewsbury, Donald A, The 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine: Recognition for
behavioral science?, American Psychologist, Vol 58(9), Sep 2003, 747-752.
Websites References:
www.nobelprize.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/ List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physiology_or_Medicine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Frisch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Lorenz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaas_Tinbergen

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