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Properties of our Voice Encode Information about Health, Fertility, and Body...
It has been known for some time that, in mammals, certain vocal features correlate well with certain aspects of body size and shape. For example, the larger the animal, the deeper the voice. No big...
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The Charming Personalities of Barbary Macaques
Guest Blog post by Patrick Tkaczynski (University of Roehampton, London, UK) Do animals have personality? The last decade or so has seen behavioral and evolutionary biologists beginning to agree with...
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Why do We and Other Animals Wince When in Pain?
[This is an adapted excerpt from my book, taken from chapter 10: The Richness of Animal Communication.] Facial expressions are a unique feature of mammals. No other group of animals has anywhere near...
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Dominance Status Affects the Transmission of Fear
Fear is a powerful motivator. It’s also a very interesting social behavior. Fear is a psychological tool that animal species use as a mechanism for avoidance. Fear is one of our most basic emotions and...
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Social Learning in Animals: Implications for the Evolution of Human Intelligence
The human capacity to learn exceeds that of any other animal. Indeed, our massive memories and impressive computing power are the engine of all that makes us different from other animals, rooted...
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The Body Language of Bonobos and the Evolution of Human Language
The Bonobo, also called pygmy chimpanzee, is the oft-forgotten human relative, the step-brother of its more famous kin, the common chimpanzee. This is understandable because bonobos are isolated to one...
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From Woodpeckers to Apes: Competition Drives the Correlation between Brain...
Most bird and mammal species are highly social. Not surprisingly, the most social clades of animals are also the smartest and have the biggest brains because being social is extra demand on cognitive...
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Dogs Understand the Concept of Different Perspectives
The fields of animal cognition and ethology (the study of animal behavior in wild, natural settings) have produced extremely exciting results over the last two decades. Gone are the days when any...
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Even Marmosets Develop Regional Dialects
[This post is a collaboration with John Jay College student Linda Armstrong, who is majoring in Comparative Human-Animal Behavior through the CUNY-BA program.] The last few decades have seen an...
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Children and Lying
“From the mouth of babes…” “Children say the darnedest things…” or my personal favorite, “Only drunks and children tell the truth.” These are all sayings that invoke the folk wisdom that children...
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