Humans have been noticing animal behavior since long before it became a “science,” so there is no single “discovery date” for animal behavior itself. What we can pinpoint more clearly is when animal behavior began being studied in a systematic, scientific way.

Early observations of animal behavior

Interest in how animals act goes back at least to ancient philosophers.

  • Aristotle (about 384–322 BCE) watched and wrote about many species, describing things like bee dances, bird courtship, and how young songbirds learn songs from adults.
  • Medieval and Renaissance naturalists continued describing animal habits, often in moral or religious terms, but still paying close attention to behavior.

So in a broad sense, people “discovered” animal behavior in ancient times —they just didn’t treat it as a modern scientific field yet.

Birth of animal‑behavior science

By the 17th–19th centuries , European naturalists explicitly framed animal actions as complex, purposeful behavior that required careful, long‑term observation. Key developments include:

  • Natural‑history studies by figures such as John Ray and Charles‑Antoine Le Roy, who probed animal movement, instinct, and learning.
  • Charles Darwin gave behavior an evolutionary framework in On the Origin of Species (1859) and later works on instincts and emotions, which helped turn animal behavior into a proper biological science.

Thus, animal behavior as a scientific discipline began taking shape in the 1700s–mid‑1800s , with major acceleration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

If you want a rough headline for “when it was first discovered”:

  • Informal discovery (observations) : ancient times, especially via figures like Aristotle (~4th century BCE).
  • Scientific discovery (as a field) : gradually from the 17th–19th centuries , crystallizing in the late 1800s–early 1900s.

Information gathered from public forums, encyclopedias, and open‑access scientific‑history sources and portrayed here.