proximate cause

…active, involving the investigation of proximate mechanisms (that is, behavior triggered by immediate stimuli coming from the outside world or inside the body), the survival and reproductive consequences of sociality, and the evolution of human behavior and cultural traditions. Social behaviorists today study a wide range of species from ants…

…best understood by differentiating its proximate cause (that is, how the behavior arises in animals) from its ultimate cause (that is, the evolutionary history and functional utility of the behavior). Proximate causes include hereditary, developmental, structural, cognitive, psychological, and physiological aspects of behavior. In other words, proximate causes are the…

…permits biologists to deduce the proximate and ultimate functions by using strong inference based on a set of critical predictions. If experiments to test these predictions indicate that the predictions are not met, then the hypothesis is falsified and discarded. If the predictions are met, the hypothesis is supported, but…

The proximate causes of social behavior include the underlying genetic, developmental, physiological (that is, neural and endocrine), and morphological mechanisms. Proximate mechanisms are required to trigger the onset of a particular behavior—such as sexual behavior in rats (Rattus), the development…

Understanding the ultimate and proximate causes of social behavior in various animals provides a compelling case that evolutionary history, natural selection, development, endocrine and neural mechanisms, and the social environment all might well affect the expression of social behavior in human beings. The process of explaining human behavior, however,…

…violent motion and required a proximate cause. For example, an oxcart would not move without the help of an ox.