Wolfgang M. Schleidt (born December 18, 1927, in Vienna) is an Austrian scientist specializing in the areas of bioacoustics, communication and classical ethology.

His crippled hand disqualified him for medical school (his preferred academic institution), so he decided to study biology and anthropology with a special emphasis on sensory and behavioral physiology.

In order to prove the efficacy of ultrasound, Schleidt started to develop and build his own electronic gadgets, becoming a pioneer of bioacoustics and animal communication.

[2][3][4][5][6] After Konrad Lorenz returned to his family villa in Altenberg in Lower Austria from Soviet captivity in 1948, Schleidt was allowed to move in there and – initially unpaid – to help convert the five-story building into a zoological institute.

Schleidt served as the supervisor of construction for the newly founded Max-Planck-Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Bavaria and is credited with naming the surrounding area "Seewiesen".

He published quantitative studies of their innate behavior and his subsequent findings on the role of signals in maintaining social bonds received widespread acclaim.

Schleidt's criticism of the prevailing theories on the domestication of dogs and his reference to the possibility of a co-evolution of humans and wolves found a surprisingly wide echo in 2003.