<p>I am a high school graduate. I am currently enrolled in a community college. I think I have decided what to major in, but I need some help. I want to be an animal behavioralist and from what I have read so far, you can do this by becoming a zoologist and specializing in animal behavior or becoming a vet and specializing in animal behavior. Am I right? I was looking at a zoology program at the University of Hawaii. From what I understand you need a bachelors degree before you can apply. What would I need to get my bachelors degree in?</p>
<p>When you use the term “animal behavioralist,” do you mean someone who studies or researches animal behavior or someone who does applied work in animal behavior, e.g., training? If you are interested in doing research on animal behavior, there are two major approaches, comparative psychology and ethology. For the former, you would major in psychology and for the latter, you would major in a bioscience dept., e.g., zoology, neurobiology & behavior, ecology & evolutionary biology, or sometimes, marine biology. It used to be that the distinction between these approaches was that comparative psychology focused on lab research and ethology focused on naturalistic, field-based studies. That’s not really a useful distinction anymore, and there is a fair amount of overlap between the fields. Researchers in other subfields of psychology also study certain aspects of animal behavior, e.g., cognitive psychologists who might study animal cognition or animal communication. If you are interested in primate behavior, this is studied by biologists, psychologists, and biological/physical anthropologists.</p>
<p>If you are interested in applied work in animal behavior, especially training, applied behavior analysis is a primary discipline. Most applied behavior analysts are found in psychology depts. These days, since most psychology depts. have a cognitive orientation, every psychology dept will not have faculty who specialize in applied behavior analysis. Of those that do, not all of them have faculty who specialize in applied animal behavior. Other fields that might involve applied work on certain aspects of animal behavior include veterinary medicine, as you mentioned, and also, animal science (found in colleges of agriculture) and wildlife biology (usually found in colleges of agriculture or natural resources). To the extent that any of these fields are involved in animal training, they probably are using methods of applied behavior analysis. There are a number of master’s and doctoral degree programs in applied behavior analysis. At the undergrad level, it tends to be a focus only if the department itself has a primary focus on behavior analysis.</p>