This paper considers the epistemic career of visual media in ethology in the mid-20th century. Above all, ethologists claimed close contact with research animals and drew scientific evidence from these human-animal communities, particularly in public relations. However, if we look into the toolboxes of comparative behavioral biologists, it becomes evident that scientifically valid research results were primarily obtained by experimenting with model images. These visual specimens tell a technical story of the methodological requirements in behavioral science necessary to bridge everyday observations between the laboratory and the field. By neutralizing individual traces of animal bodies as well as their observers, they prompted the abstraction of ethological hypotheses. The case study of East-German biologist Günter Tembrock , who maintained his own collection of newspaper clippings, drawings, photographs, and films, offers a new perspective on the methodological development of this field. Furthermore, this article contributes to a scholarly discussion geared toward expanding the spaces of ethological research. My analysis of the image collections of

Ethology is considered the leading biological discipline within behavioral research in the 20th century. Its history is told as a seemingly straightforward narrative: Ethology has its roots in the 1930s in German-speaking countries, a disciplinary heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, after which it slowly lost relevance. It employs a distinct approach to the comparative study of animal behavior, which is characterized by a physiological method of non-invasive, often observational studies of natural behavioral patterns, which were conceived of as shaped by evolution. Ethology contains stories of charismatic research animals such as the jackdaw Tschock or the goose Martina, 1 draws on academic disciplines such as ornithology, ichthyology, and entomology, 2 and also incorporates contexts and practices of animal lovers, bird watchers, and hunters, as well as those involved in animal husbandry, wildlife preservation, and livestock farming, or who work in nature reserves or zoological gardens. 3 Ethology is further connected to the development of certain visual media, such

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