Descriptive Phenomenology as an Alternative to Prevent the Theory-Ladenness of Observation in the Study of Animal Behavior: Opening towards an Etho-Phenomenology

In ethology, and more generally in the study of animal behavior, observations are theory-laden. A review of theories of animal behavior reveals that the animal is a variable object, shaped by variable levels of causality. This approach to animal behavior, which differs radically from the way psychology studies human behavior, is a consequence of the difficulty of treating animals as subjects in ethology, where they are most often studied in the third person. However, there is a subjectivist tradition in the study of animal behavior, influenced by a phenomenological background. Our aim to promote a at first person approach has led us to propose an etho-phenomenology based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Francisco Varela’s enaction theory and constructivist psychology. However, in order to legitimize this approach to animal behavior, we apply it here to behaviors that seem abnormal according to traditional explanatory frameworks, such as actospatiality, tail carrying in mice or expressing ambivalence displayed through color in octopuses. Furthermore, to explore issues such as human-animal communication, the etho-phenomenological perspective is combined with the notion of participatory sense-making, leading us to propose a theory of emotional hybridization.