Paul Leyhausen

Paul Leyhausen (born November 10, 1916 in Bonn , † May 14, 1998 in Windeck ) was a German zoologist and behavioral scientist . In the 1960s and 1970s, he specifically researched the behavioral repertoire of cats in a branch of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Wuppertal .

Career

After high school graduation (1936) as well as work and military service (until 1939) Paul Leyhausen first studied zoology , botany , chemistry and geology at the University of Bonn . In 1941 he moved to the University of Königsberg to study animal psychology with Konrad Lorenz, which was then emerging , where he quickly became Lorenz's research assistant. In 1942 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, but soon fell into British captivity, from which he was released in 1947. In 1948 he published a behavioral study on a young black bear that he had cared for in the Canadian internment camp.

Also in 1948 Paul Leyhausen finished his studies in the subjects of zoology , psychology and geology at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and was awarded a PhD with a dissertation supervised by Otto Koehler on "Observations on lion-tiger hybrids". rer. nat. PhD. In 1950 he also completed the main examination for psychologists in Bonn and was then a. a. until 1952 lecturer in animal psychology at the Psychological Institute of the University of Bonn. During this time he had a job at the Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Institute and Museum in his hometown. In the Koenig Museum he was a. a small animal house and some outdoor enclosures are available. He was able to keep a few house cats as well as a single Brazilian tiger cat , observe and compare their behavior and undertake targeted behavioral experiments.

When his scholarship for Bonn expired, Paul Leyhausen moved to the Institute for Scientific Film (IWF, Göttingen ) as a biology consultant in 1952 , where he co-founded the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica and produced more than 100 scientific films by 1958.

From June 1958 Leyhausen held an assistant position at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Konrad Lorenz's department and set up a branch in Wuppertal . In 1961 he was appointed its head, and he remained so until his retirement (1981).

Research topics

Leyhausen's main areas of work in Wuppertal were the systematics of cat-like predators, action catalogs for the behavior of cats and viverrid species , the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of complex drive systems, space-time systems of social behavior in mammals and humans as well as human drive problems.

In the more than 20 years of his working group in Wuppertal, numerous cat species were kept in this institute, including species that had hardly ever been taken into human care before ( flat-headed cat , marble cat , African golden cat ) and / or their long-term successful keeping mostly considerable Had caused difficulties ( black-footed cat , sand cat ). Only over the long years of close daily "coexistence" with these species as well as with the other species kept at the Wuppertal Institute (including the Asian golden cat , Bengal cat , serval , tree ocelot ) could the comprehensive and precise knowledge of their behavioral repertoires as well as possible individual behavioral characteristics of individual animals grow which were reflected in Leyhausen's publications. So the knowledge known today about the behavior of most of these felid species is still largely based on the observations in his working group.

In addition to numerous specialist articles and specialist books, Leyhausen also published various popular science books on keeping cats. His research was immediately incorporated into the design of cat enclosures in many zoological gardens.

Fonts (selection)

• Cat soul. Essence and social behavior. Franckh-Kosmos, 2nd edition 2005, ISBN 3440098648
• The cat who walks by himself. In: Donald A. Dewsbury: Studying Animal Behavior. Autobiographies of the Founders. Chicago University Press, Chicago and London 1985, ISBN 978-0-226-14410-8 , pp. 224-256.
• Cats. A behavioral science. Parey, Berlin 1979, (5th, completely revised edition), ISBN 978-3-489-60536-2 .
• Cat Behavior: The Predatory and Social Behavior of Domestic and Wild Cats. Garland series in ethology, Taylor & Francis 1979, ISBN 978-0-8240-7017-5 .
• with Konrad Lorenz : Drives for animal and human behavior. Collected Treatises. Piper, Munich 1968.
• Biology of Expression and Impression. Part 1. In: Psychological Research. Volume 31, 1967, pp. 113-176, doi: 10.1007 / BF00424518 .
• Biology of Expression and Impression. Part 2. In: Psychological Research. Volume 31, 1967, pp. 177-227, doi: 10.1007 / BF00419949 .
• About the function of the relative mood hierarchy (shown using the example of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of the prey capture of predators). In: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie. Volume 22, No. 4, 1965, pp. 412-494, doi: 10.1111 / j.1439-0310.1965.tb01504.x .
• Domestication-related behavioral characteristics of the house cat. In: Journal for Animal Breeding and Breeding Biology. Volume 77, No. 1-4, 1962, pp. 191-197, doi: 10.1111 / j.1439-0388.1962.tb01244.x .
• Behavioral studies in cats. In: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie. Volume 13, Beiheft 2, 1956, pp. 1-120.
• Comparisons about the territoriality of animals and the space requirements of humans. In: Homo. International journal for comparative research on humans. Volume 5, 1954, pp. 116-124. ISSN 0018-442X.
• Observations on lion-tiger hybrids with a few remarks on the systematics of big cats. In: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie . Volume 7, No. 1, 1950, pp. 46-83, doi: 10.1111 / j.1439-0310.1950.tb01621.x .

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Leyhausen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Videos by and about Paul Leyhausen in the AV portal of the Technical Information Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gustav Peters: Obituary: Paul Leyhausen (1916-1998). In: Bonn zoological contributions. Volume 49, 2000, pp. 179–189, full text (PDF; 854 kB)