After finishing secondary school in 1951, Wickler studied biology and then received a grant to go to the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, where he was a student of Konrad Lorenz and Erich von Holst.

After he completed his doctoral work on the behavior of fish, he was scientific assistant in Seewiesen as of 1960 and finally qualified to become a professor at the University of Munich in 1969.

Other research fields of his department at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology were studies about the social behavior of spiders and grasshoppers, about acquisition of food, reproduction and mating of prawns, as well as rather philosophical publications on "biological explanation" in connection with ethical questions (such as "Die Biologie der zehn Gebote", The Biology of the Ten Commandments, in 1971).

Ein Naturgesetz und seine Folgen" (Male - Female, a Natural Law and its Consequences), also written with Ute Seibt in 1983.

Along with the former Bonn behavioral biologist, Hanna-Maria Zippelius, Wolfgang Wickler was one of the most aggressive critics of the instinct theory of his mentor, Konrad Lorenz.