Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen FRS[1] (/ˈtɪnbɜːrɡən/ TIN-bur-gən, Dutch: [ˈnikoː(laːs) ˈtɪmbɛrɣə(n)]; 15 April 1907 – 21 December 1988) was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz[7][8][9][10][11] for their discoveries concerning the organization and elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns in animals.

In the 1960s, he collaborated with filmmaker Hugh Falkus on a series of wildlife films, including The Riddle of the Rook (1972) and Signals for Survival (1969), which won the Italia prize in that year and the American blue ribbon in 1971.

Born in The Hague, Netherlands, he was one of five children of Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen and his wife Jeannette van Eek.

His brother, Jan Tinbergen, won the first Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1969.

Tinbergen's experience as a prisoner of the Nazis led to some friction with longtime intellectual collaborator Konrad Lorenz, and it was several years before the two reconciled.

[17] In particular, he was interested in explaining 'spontaneous' behaviours: those that occurred in their complete form the first time they were performed and that seemed resistant to the effects of learning.

Behaviour is a reaction in that to a certain extent it is reliant on external stimuli, however it is also spontaneous since it is also dependent upon internal causal factors.

In this case, the chemical stimuli of the odour allowed the next link in the chain to be released, encouraging the bee to land.

[19] In 1973, Tinbergen, along with Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns".

[20] The award recognised their studies on genetically programmed behaviour patterns, their origins, maturation and their elicitation by key stimuli.

Tinbergen stated that their revival of the "watching and wondering" approach to studying behaviour could indeed contribute to the relief of human suffering.

At the time, these discoveries were stated to have caused "a breakthrough in the understanding of the mechanisms behind various symptoms of psychiatric disease, such as anguish, compulsive obsession, stereotypic behaviour and catatonic posture".

[22] Tinbergen's contribution to these studies included the testing of the hypotheses of Lorenz/von Frisch by means of "comprehensive, careful, and ingenious experiments"[23] as well as his work on supernormal stimuli.