An ethologist aboard HMS Beagle: the young Darwin's observations on animal behavior

Darwin's notes from the Beagle period abound with observations on animal behavior. Although in places anecdotal and anthropomorphic, they include many detailed, lively comments of the activities of birds, reptiles, mammals, crustacea, insects, and other invertebrates. In his comparative approach, belief in the importance of heredity, an understanding that behavior might be of assistance in taxonomy, and that it was linked with both the organism's morphology and habitat, and his attempts at experiments, Charles Darwin in his early and mid-twenties was using techniques and concepts that were to be of great significance in his later work.