Martin Humphrey Moynihan (5 February 1928 - 3 December 1996) was an influential behavioral evolutionary biologist and ornithologist who studied under Ernst Mayr

Ernst Mayr

Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...

 and Niko Tinbergen, and was a contemporary of Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris

Desmond John Morris, born 24 January 1928 in Purton, north Wiltshire, is a British zoologist and ethologist, as well as a popular anthropologist. He is also known as a painter, television presenter and popular author.-Life:...

 and various other famous ethologists

Ethology

Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....

. He was the founding director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, the only bureau of the Smithsonian Institution based outside of the United States, is dedicated to understanding biological diversity. What began in 1923 as small field station on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Zone has developed...

 (STRI) in Panama

Panama

Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

.

His early research was mainly on seagulls as they were ubiquitous and easy to observe. Later work included even the octopus

Octopus

The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...

, and Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna

Terence Kemp McKenna was an Irish-American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.-Early...

 quotes Moynihan in his book "Food of the Gods" as saying, with respect to this creature's remarkable ability to change its body's shape, texture and color, "Like the octopi, our destiny is to become what we think, to have our thoughts become our bodies and our bodies become our thoughts."

He was married to Olga F. Linares

Olga F. Linares

Olga Francesca Linares is a Panamanian–American academic anthropologist and archaeologist, and senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, who have supported much of her research throughout her career...

, the noted Panamanian-American anthropologist and STRI senior research scientist.

Moynihan died in Albi, France in 1996 of lung cancer

Lung cancer

Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

, aged 68.

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