Niko's Nature by Kruuk Hans

Author:Kruuk, Hans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2003-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

A whole issue of the leading bird journal Ibis (edited in Lack’s institute by Reg Moreau) was to be dedicated to the topic of territoriality.77 An unedifying small row ensued; Niko had suggested that he himself write a general introduction, but he was left out of the plans altogether and Reg Moreau asked Robert Hinde to write a summing-up. Niko was rather offended and suggested to Robert that they write it jointly; Hinde thought better not. Niko then wrote a separate territory paper for another bird journal,78 and finally he was also asked to contribute a paper to the special issue of Ibis, on just the territorial behaviour of gulls.79 He consulted Robert Hinde about these papers, telling him what he planned to do in the face of the uncooperative ecologists. But Niko was not entirely honest with Hinde either; perhaps he suspected that Robert had gone behind his back. He had already submitted his papers to Ibis and Bird Study at the time when he wrote to Robert80 that he was planning to write them. None of the great men came out of this bickering exchange of letters with a great deal of honour.

One can see that, at times, Niko must have felt the Oxford establishment as a cold shower, and he did not ask for, or get, an involvement from the Oxford ecologists. But that was just what would have been needed: Niko’s 1950s and 1960s questions about the biological function of behaviour required ecological answers, and, conversely, ecological relationships needed to be explained in terms of behaviour. The next generation of Niko’s students started addressing this, but it was to be another twenty years before the potential was fully realized, when behavioural ecology became a science.

The main Zoology Department in Oxford was housed in a wing of the old university museum, a Victorian building with many small corridors and spiral staircases, far too small for its purpose. Professor Sir Alister Hardy had lined the corridors with small aquaria and tanks for fish and frogs, and there was a small patio, where coffee was had when the weather allowed. Niko had been allocated a quite large room next to the back door, connecting with the room of his secretary through a small hatch. His students were mostly in a group of prefab huts that had been erected on the flat roof of the building, a world in itself, where they worked day and night, where finches were kept for study, where people slept (illegally) and played their guitars. Niko did not go there very often but left it to the students to sort themselves out. When he was in the department, he spent most of his time in his room behind his desk, rapidly hammering away on his typewriter, often sitting on a box rather than on his chair, smoking like a chimney, slightly annoying his secretary by wanting to do much of his mail himself. His room was a rather dark, dank pit, its view blocked by another large laboratory, but he seemed perfectly content there.

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