Chimpanzees learn to crack nuts faster than humans
Early this year, Christophe Boesch and coworkers released a paper describing their observations on how fast chimpanzees and humans learn to crack nuts. They ...
All posts tagged with behavior
Probabilistic calls of the titi monkeys
A fascinating paper in Science Advances today looks at the way that a small platyrrhine monkey species conveys information about predators in its vocal commu...
Link: Long-read on Cayo Santiago
The New York Times Magazine today has a long-read article about Cayo Santiago, the island just off Puerto Rico where a large colony of rhesus macaques was in...
Link: Archaeology of nonhuman tool use
Scientific American is previewing an article by Michael Haslam from their March issue, “The Other Tool Users”. The article focuses on the use of archaeologic...
Did hominins associate with antelopes?
Last summer in the South African Journal of Science, faunal specialist Shaw Badenhorst published a short commentary with an interesting question for early ho...
Bonobo preferences: dominance over cooperation
An article in Current Biology by Christopher Krupenye and Brian Hare suggests that bonobos may have a social preference for individuals who wear their domina...
Notable: Chimpanzee corpse cleaning
Notable: van Leeuwen, Edwin J. C., Katherine A. Cronin, and Daniel B. M. Haun. 2017. Tool use for corpse cleaning in chimpanzees. Scientific Reports 7:44091....
Fuentes on creativity and human collaboration
Agustín Fuentes has a short essay in New York magazine’s “Science of Us”: “Creative Collaboration Is What Humans Do Best.”
Link: Bonobo female coalitions
Nice article by Natalie Angier about recent work on bonobo social behavior: “Beware the Bonds of Female Bonobos”.
Grief among cetaceans
Traci Watson from National Geographic reports on a study of behavior in whales looking specifically at how members of social groups react to the death of an ...
Link: Prairie dogs kill ground squirrels
Ed Yong writes about a long-term study of prairie dog sociality that demonstrated a surprising behavior among females: they kill dozens of ground squirrels: ...
Link: Ghostly face emerges from averaging photos of inanimate objects
From Ethan Siegel: I’m weirdly fascinated by the ghostly image of a human face that emerges after averaging dozens of inanimate objects: “Averaging Inanimate...
Crows respect their dead
Carl Zimmer writes in the NY Times today about an experiment with crows. John Marzluff and colleagues from the University of Washington have been examining a...
Link: Carl Safina on animal grief
An evocative excerpt from the new book by Carl Safina, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel:
Music and monkeys
BBC Earth is running a story by Colin Barras looking at the origins of music in ancient humans and possible perceptual preadaptation to music in other primat...
Notable: Culture and compressibility
Notable paper: Tamariz, Monica and Simon Kirby. 2015. Culture: Copying, Compression, and Conventionality. Cognitive Science 39:171-183. doi:10.1111/cogs.12144
Notable: Hadza foraging by random walk
Notable paper: Raichlen, D. A., Wood, B. M., Gordon, A. D., Mabulla, A. Z., Marlowe, F. W., & Pontzer, H. (2014). Evidence of Lévy walk foraging patterns...
Investigating Neandertal behavior with Geraldine and Clive Finlayson
A week ago I was in Gibraltar for the 2014 Calpe Conference. The conference this year is focused on issues of world heritage, as the Neandertal sites of Gorh...
Lifetime interactions of male hunter-gatherers
Human hunter-gatherers, despite living in small groups of 20-50 individuals, make social contacts with up to a thousand other individuals in across their lif...
Notable: The cranial injury of Qafzeh 11
Notable paper: Coqueugniot H, Dutour O, Arensburg B, Duday H, Vandermeersch B, Tillier, A-M. (2014) Earliest Cranio-Encephalic Trauma from the Levantine Midd...
Monkey pyrophiles
Nicole Herzog and colleagues spent half a year following a troop of vervet monkeys during the controlled burn season at Loskop Dam Nature Reserve in South Af...
Kebara hyoid still speaking
In an open access article in PLoS ONE, Ruggero D’Anastasio and colleagues take a closer look at the internal structure of the hyoid bone from the Kebara 2 Ne...
Muriquis and human behavior
Smithsonian magazine has a long profile article about my UW-Madison colleague Karen Strier: “Humans would be better off if they monkeyed around like muriquis...
The scope of bonobos
National Geographic has an excellent article by David Quammen about the science of bonobo behavior: “The Left Bank Ape: An Exclusive Look at Bonobo Behavior”...
Primate mating patterns
Ecology, diet, competition, and ease of movement all affect the size of primate groups. The structure of primate groups is primarily affected by the mating s...
How do primates move around?
The diversification of the first primates from other early mammals took place partly because the ancestors of the primates came to inhabit a unique environme...
A Neandertal mortuary in Spain?
El Pais has a fascinating story about the Paleolithic sites in the Lozoya river valley: “A Neanderthal trove in Madrid”.
Quote: Jerison on animal intelligence
Harry Jerison, famous researcher of brain sizes across classes and orders of animals, commented on the relation of “encephalization” to the intelligence of a...
Perils of talking to apes
Barbara King comments on Koko, Kanzi and Panbanisha, “Thoughts On Three Famous ‘Language Apes’”.
Neandertals lacked mental eminence
If you care about Neandertal behavior and haven’t read this 2004 article by John Speth, you really should treat yourself: “News flash: Negative evidence conv...
Chimpanzee watching
Captive chimpanzees do clever things, but how deep is their planning? Michael Balter describes a research study following how one chimpanzee harasses zoo vis...
Lost pregnancies in geladas after male takeovers
Ed Yong reports on new research from Eila Roberts, with Jacinta Beehner’s research group at the University of Michigan, who was able to show that the rate of...
Testosterone, fatherhood,
Daniel Lende has done a nice interview with Northwestern University anthropologist Lee Gettler (“On Testosterone and Real Men: An Interview with Lee Gettler”...
Magical psychology
I enjoyed this article by Mo Costandi: “Sleights of hand, sleights of mind”.
Primate extractive foraging and tool use
An important difference among some primate species is their ability to get foods that are hidden or protected by natural defenses. A little cleverness may yi...
Shellfish gathering, paleoanthropological strawman
We have known for many years that Lower Paleolithic people were using shellfish, fish, and littoral resources at sites across the Old World, from Trinil Joor...
Mailbag: Could autism genes be adaptive?
I have always wondered if autism could be an adaptive mutation. However, since I myself have autism, and specifically one of the more fortunate types of auti...
Brain scans and gene scans
Wray Herbert notes the fallacy of interpreting fMRI and other brain imagery as especially meaningful: “The Brain Is Not an Explanation”. I’m pointing to this...
Field primatology
Noah Snyder-Mackler’s continuing series in the NY Times’ “Scientist at Work” blog has been providing a journal of his fieldwork on gelada baboons.
Mental mismatches
A Primate of Modern Aspect (“The sexuality wars, featuring apes”) writes about some of the reactions to the new book, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of...
Bitwise consciousness
Carl Zimmer writes about theories of consciousness in today’s Science NY Times, and describes the work of my Wisconsin colleague, Giulio Tononi.
Hauser update
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on an “internal document” from the Marc Hauser investigation: “Document Sheds Light on Investigation at Harvard”. T...
Marc Hauser misconduct findings
Maybe by now everybody has seen the story about Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser:
Stress on Sapolsky
Jonah Lehrer in Wired has a long profile of Robert Sapolsky and his work on stress in baboons: “Under Pressure: The Search for a Stress Vaccine”
Better than a finger in the eye
Michael Balter writes in Science about a meeting called “Culture Evolves”: “Probing Culture’s Secrets, From Capuchins to Children.”
Hare/Woods interview
The science page of the NY Times has a conversation with Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods. Woods’ new book is Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in...
Bonobo corpse encounter
A short piece in Pan Africa News by Takumasa Yokoyama and Satoshi Yasumoto reports on their observations of a bonobo group after the discovery that one of th...
Chimps and fire
From an Iowa State press release:
Evolving swarm bots
Robot swarms programmed with genetic algorithms to “evolve” their behavior:
Flu blues
Will the swine flu lead to the next big evolutionary change for humans? No. But it has already begun to affect the way people interact with each other. I wan...
Protolanguage proceedings
Edmund Blair Bolles has posted some entries about the proceedings at a protolanguage conference. There’s much of interest there, but I’ll give a provocative ...
Dead salmon reads your thoughts
Put dead fish in a scanner, push the button, and see what happens:
Dog psych
Time magazine has a nice article by Carl Zimmer, which profiles anthropologist Brian Hare, who’s been busy studying dogs:
Army ant chimpanzee toolkits
A nice story about Crickette Sanz’ and David Morgan’s work with chimpanzees of the Goualango Triangle, and the tools they use to forage for army ants:
Handedness in ancient hominins
Michael Balter writes about the work of Liverpool archaeologist Natalie Uomini, who is studying the evolution of handedness by experiment and attempting to f...
Religion and evolution book showdown
William Saletan reviews Robert Wright’s book, The Evolution of God, with some discussion of Nicholas Wade’s upcoming book, The Faith Instinct: How Religion E...
Orangutan music
One step closer to Ewoks:
"[P]lease do not refer to me as the 'Ann-Coulter-loving scientist'"
Last week I pointed to a really stupid story in the Times (UK): “Women are getting more beautiful”. Once upon a time, I had a reader complain that I called t...
Mailbag: Neandertal wanderlust
Dear Prof. Hawks,
"We have ways of changing behavior"
Ann Althouse points to a “chilling locution” in a Wall Street Journal story about health spending: “Nearly 10% of Health Spending Due to Obesity, Report Says”
Whale societies
Wired’s science blog has a piece on cetacean culture and communciation: “Whales might be as much like people as apes are”. Dalhousie University researcher Ha...
"Our brains are fluid and plastic"
For some reason, it’s “bash evolutionary psychology” week. First, Sharon Begley writes a 7-page essay in Newsweek, “Don’t Blame the Caveman.”, and now David ...
"Preverbal infants in canine clothing"
Jennifer Viegas writes about dogs as a model for human social evolution.
Pleasurable homology
A long time ago, I got into a very heated argument with somebody about whether animals feel pleasure. I don’t think we disagreed really in the particulars – ...
The premeditated chimp
Hmm….
Alloparenting after Hrdy
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has written a new book, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding to be released this spring, and the New York ...
Deceit on display
Natalie Angier enters a nice article on deception in animals, focusing on primates.
Yawns, the brain cooler
When in doubt, cooling the brain always seems like a good answer:
IQ, brain size and genetics in children
Dienekes points to a study by Marieke van Leeuwen and colleagues, in which they assess the phenotypic correlation between IQ and brain volume in a sample of ...
Group celebrations: an "evolutionary urge"?
There’s no end of bunkum just-so stories about the evolution of human behaviors. Not saying they’re all bunkum, just that many are, particularly when they’re...
A spider on your face won't stop me from criticizing this article
So there’s this story about how your fear response may explain your politics:
Superstition explained? Signs point to no…
I happened to be lecturing about cause-effect relationships in my Biology of Mind course today, and will continue the subject next time. So I was interested ...
Oliver Sacks in NY Review of Books
Oliver Sacks reviews the new book, Hurry Down Sunshine in the current New York Review of Books. It’s an interesting read, coupled with Sacks’ own experiences...
Quote: Darwin on the eyebrows
Darwin, in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, p. 222-223, referring to the muscles involved in furrowing the brow during a frown:
Stickleback sex
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel prints a nice article about the work of my UW colleague, Jenny Boughman. Boughman studies adaptation and mating behavior in st...
Working out how smart brains work
Scientific American Mind has an interesting article in the September issue, called “High-aptitude minds”. The article ponders explanations for how smart brai...
Bobsleds, no; sprinting, yes
If you’re interested in athletic performance and genetics, read Daniel Macarthur on ACTN3, sprinting, and Jamaica:
Politics and evolution, reverse-wise
I missed this op-ed by David Barash when it came out last month. It is an argument that commentators on the political left would prefer to ignore evolution j...
Worms do calculus
Another sign I’m not expecting enough of my students: “Worms do calculus to find food”:
Darwin, emotion, and WALL-E
Jonah Lehrer went in to WALL-E (an enormously entertaining movie) and came out thinking of Darwin’s Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals:
Cousin marriage and flatus?
At Mixing Memory, Chris describes a study that is just twisted enough to make you want to be a psychologist:
Cognitive Daily reviews study on reputation-building
Dave Munger reviews a study of an experiment in reputation-building:
Not the parrot sketch
The New Yorker has a fascinating article about Irene Pepperberg and the way people are grieving over her deceased parrot, Alex:
Buller on Buller
On the subject of objections to Buller's book, I should point out that Buller himself has a website where he has additional work and some responses to criti...
Evolutionary psychology responds to Buller
A reader forwarded me a reference to this website, which is a placeholder for present and future critiques to David Buller's book, Adapting Minds : Evolutio...
Buller on mating preferences
Chapter 5 of David Buller's Adapting Minds : Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature is mostly about the critique of studies that ...
Buller on massive modularity
Chapter 4 of David Buller's Adapting Minds : Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature is a critique of the concept of massive modul...
Buller on mental adaptations
I'm reading through David Buller's Adapting Minds : Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. It's a back-burner read for me; I pic...