Laboratory studies on a range of animals have identified a bias that seems to violate basic principles of rational behavior: A preference is shown for feeding options that previously provided food when reserves were low, even though another option had been found to give the same reward with less delay. The bias presents a challenge to normative…

Studies involving oro-facial asymmetries in nonhuman primates have largely demonstrated a right hemispheric dominance for communicative signals and conveyance of emotional information. A recent study on chimpanzee reported the first evidence of significant left-hemispheric dominance when using attention-getting sounds and rightward bias for…

It is important to monitor feedback related to the intended result of an action while executing that action. This monitoring process occurs hierarchically; that is, sensorimotor processing occurs at a lower level, and conceptual representation of action goals occurs at a higher level. Although the hierarchical nature of self-monitoring may derive…

Asymmetries of emotional facial expressions in humans offer reliable indexes to infer brain lateralization and mostly revealed right hemisphere dominance. Studies concerned with oro-facial asymmetries in nonhuman primates largely showed a left-sided asymmetry in chimpanzees, marmosets and macaques. The presence of asymmetrical oro-facial…

The overwhelming majority of play research concerns juveniles. However, a full understanding of the phenomenon requires knowledge of play and playfulness across the life spans of those animals, including humans, who play in adulthood. The authors investigate a theory of play based on Darwin's concept of sexual selection that may account for the…

The study of evolutionary theory and fieldwork in animal behavior is enriched when students leave the classroom so they may test their abilities to think and act like scientists. This article describes a course on evolutionary theory and animal behavior that blended on campus learning with field experience in the United States and in Ecuador and…

Conformity--defined here by the fact that an individual displays a particular behavior because it is the most frequent the individual witnessed in others--has long been recognized by social psychologists as one of the main categories of social influence. Surprisingly, it is only recently that conformity has become an active topic in animal and…

We describe, discuss and illustrate a metaphoric parallel between the history of the most famous Spanish liqueur, "Anis del Mono" ("Anis" of the Monkey), and the evolution of living organisms in the light of Darwinian theory and other biological hypotheses published subsequent to Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species." Also, we report the use of a…

Following evolutionary theory and an agriculture model, ecosystem research has stressed bottom-up dynamics, implying that top wild predators are epiphenomenal effects of more basic causes. As such, they are assumed expendable. A more modern co-evolutionary and wilderness approach--trophic cascades--instead suggests that top predators, whose…

Central nervous networks, be they a part of the human brain or a group of neurons in a snail, may be designed to produce distinct patterns of movement. Central pattern generators can account for the development and production of normal vocal signals without auditory feedback in non-songbirds. Songbirds need auditory feedback to develop and…

In this inquiry-based activity, students catalog external and internal characteristics of four different classes of animals during dissection exercises. On the basis of their accumulated data, students compare and contrast the animals, devise a phylogenetic tree, and provide reasonable characteristics for extinct transitional organisms. (Contains…

The author visited the Galapagos Islands in 2009 and here looks at their biodiversity through pictures taken then. The diverse habitats of the Islands are reflected in the great diversity of flora and fauna found on them, with many species endemic to the Islands. The stories of the land iguanas, control of introduced species and the giant…

These activities, prepared for key stage 5 students (ages 16-18) and also suitable for key stage 4 (ages 14-16), show that physical appearance is not necessarily the best way to classify mammals. DNA structure is examined to show how similarities and differences between DNA sequences of mammals can be used to establish evolutionary relationships.…

The primary theoretical framework for the study of human physical attraction is currently Darwinian sexual selection. Not only has this perspective enabled the discovery of what appear to be strong universals in human mate choice but it has also facilitated our understanding of systematic variation in preferences both between and within…

The theory of evolution by natural selection has revolutionized the biological sciences yet remains confusing and controversial to the public at large. This study explored how a particular segment of the public--visitors to a natural history museum--reason about evolution in the context of an interactive cladogram, or evolutionary tree. The…