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the action itself. As a step toward such contextual analysis, we might wonder
whether Henryson had this in mind:
One rural female wood mouse (
Apodemus sylvaticus
) adopted a dorsoven-
trally flattened posture, exhibiting, in an unspecified but seemingly fearful
context, tachycardia and elevated body temperature, and associated tremu-
lous movements of the fore- and hind-paws. These signs appeared to be
stress-induced. A conspecific female approached and initiated prolonged
nonreciprocal grooming, perhaps with the consequence of diminishing the
signs of putative stress. Subsequent molecular analyses confirmed the
hypothesis that these individuals were siblings.
The only merit of the aridity of this version is that it exposes the states and
events that can usefully be defined in an ethogram and exposes the sequences
of those that will become grist for analysis:
(I) ETHOGRAM:
crouch:
dorsoventral flattened posture with head close
to the (i.e., modifier) ground;
shake:
tremulous movement of body (no
modifier), or shaking fore-paw(s) (modifier 1) or shaking hind-paw (mod-
ifier 2);
approach:
one individual moves toward another;
groom opposite:
one individual grooms the other on the head, or neck, or back, or flank
(modifier 1).
(II) SEQUENCE: BEHAVIOR: A-crouch
!
A-shake
!
B-approach-A
!
B-nose-to-nose-A
!
B-groom-A.
MODIFIER 1: ground paw
MODIFIER 2: foot
TIME:
t
0
!
t
1
!
t
2
!
t
3
!
t
4
!
. . .
t
n;
;
DURATION: (
t
1
-
t
0
) (
t
2
-
t
1
) (
t
3
-
t
2
) (
t
4
-
t
3
) (
t
n
-
t
4
)
SUBJECTS: 2 female wood mice (
Apodemus sylvaticus)
Clearly, there are many ways of describing an observation. Henryson's orig-
inal and our coded version may be quests for different sorts of understanding.
The point is that having designed an ethogram and having chosen the correct
