Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt

Lore & Background

Born in Vienna, Austria, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt was a descendant of the ancient Regensburg knightly family Eibl von Eibesfeldt. His father, a professor of botany, and his mother, a trained art historian, fostered his early interest in zoology; by age ten he was reading natural history magazines. After his father’s death in 1941, his school performance declined and he was placed in a boarding school. Drafted at fifteen as an air force assistant in 1944, he continued his studies during lulls in air raids, earning a wartime high school diploma. He began studying natural sciences at the University of Vienna in May 1945. There he studied under Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Wilhelm von Marinelli, meeting Otto Koenig through the latter’s research group. From 1946 to 1949 he worked at the Biological Station Wilhelminenberg, and in 1949 he joined Konrad Lorenz’s Institute for Comparative Behavior Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in 1949 with a study on the mating biology of the common toad, while also raising a young badger and conducting his first rodent behavior research. In 1951 he moved to the Max Planck Research Center for Comparative Behavioral Research, and later to the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen. He participated in the first Xarifa Expeditions to the Caribbean and Galápagos in 1953–54, where he drafted a memorandum on island protection. A second UNESCO-sponsored trip in 1957 led to the founding of the Charles Darwin Research Station and protected areas. He served as scientific director of a second Xarifa expedition to the Indian Ocean in 1957–58, and held a visiting professorship at the University of Chicago in 1961. He qualified as a professor in zoology at LMU Munich in 1963, becoming a full professor in 1970. His early work described cleaning symbiosis in reef groupers, tournament behavior in marine iguanas, schooling behavior in fish, and the cleaner wrasse and its mimic. He also described several subspecies of marine iguana on the Galápagos and species of tube eels in the Indian Ocean. After two decades in animal ethology, he turned to human behavior in the 1960s, creating the world’s largest cross-cultural film documentary series on human behavior and establishing human ethology as an independent scientific field.

Reader's Guide

Eibl-Eibesfeldt's significance lies in his pioneering role in establishing human ethology as an independent branch of behavioral biology. By applying methods from animal ethology to humans, he demonstrated that many behaviors—such as facial expressions of emotion and greeting rituals—are universal and likely innate, challenging theories that attributed all social behavior solely to socialization. His cross-cultural film documentation, spanning forty years and multiple indigenous groups, created an unparalleled archive of human behavior. His work on animal behavior, including the discovery of cleaning symbiosis in reef fish and descriptions of marine iguana tournament behavior, also contributed foundational knowledge to ethology.

Did You Know?

• He was the first to describe the cleaning symbiosis of reef groupers and the tournament behavior of marine iguanas.
• His initiatives led to the founding of the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz in the Galápagos Islands.
• He studied people born deaf and blind to identify universal human behaviors.