behavior
grrlscientist | September 11, 2007I promised that I would post the link to the interview with Irene Pepperberg by All Things Considered, so here it is. It also includes a streaming version [3:53]
grrlscientist | September 11, 2007tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg
Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus,
who worked with Irene Pepperberg for more than 30 years.
Image: Mike Lovett/Brandeis University [larger size]
Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, has managed something that most of us never will: his obituary is in today's NYTimes;
Scientists have long debated whether any other species can develop the ability to learn human language. Alex's language facility was, in some ways, more surprising than…
grrlscientist | September 10, 2007tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Irene Pepperberg, streaming video
"Alex is actually THINKING!"
Well, of course animals think. They're constantly making decisions based on information available to them. What was special about Alex, the African grey parrot who worked with Irene Pepperberg, was his ability to communicate his thoughts, giving us insight into how his mind works. Rest in peace, little guy. [0:34]
grrlscientist | September 10, 2007tags: suicide, world suicide prevention day, mental health, depression, bipolar disorder
Suicide is a major public health issue and accounts for nearly 3% of all deaths worldwide -- around the world, one million people will die by suicide this year. But suicide is a taboo subject that many people, regardless of age, sex, socioeconomic status or religious and cultural affiliations, are ashamed of, and rarely speak about. This veil of secrecy leads to needless deaths worldwide. So as a result, today was designated as World Suicide Prevention Day, which is designed to raise public awareness of…
voltagegate | September 2, 2007I found a neat little story about the binturong's eating habits in captivity:
They prefer the sweetest foods, with the exception of their taste for meats. A
partial list: apples, melons of all types, cantaloupes, grapes, pears, kiwi, mangos, star fruits,
avocados, oranges, grapefruit, nectarines, peaches, cherries, tomatoes, chicken (raw or cooked), mice and rats, beef, fish, some greens (mostly the stems of anything green in their cage except for grass and poison ivy) and any sweets anyone will feed them. Marshmallows are a big hit, as are chocolate muffins, apple pie, and McDonald's egg…
grrlscientist | August 31, 2007tags: spider, giant spider web,arachnid, social behavior
Lake Tawokoni State Park rangers (l-r) Mike McCord and Freddie Gowin continue to monitor a giant communal spider web at the park Tuesday, August 29, 2007. Officials at Lake Tawokoni State Park have been watching the growth of a giant communal spider web that has formed in the park over the past several weeks. The giant spider webs are rare for Texas.
Image: Tom Pennington. [Scary wallpaper size]
Have you heard about the spiders that spun a web that is the size of Texas? Well, actually, the web is only the size of two football…
grrlscientist | August 31, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, splendid fairy-wren, Malurus splendens,sexual dichromatism, evolution, behavior, promiscuity, social monogamy
Male splendid fairy-wren, Malurus splendens.
Image: Pete Morris (Surfbirds.com). [screensaver size]
Everyone is familiar with sexual dichromatism in birds; you know, the gorgeous, colorful male who is paired with the drab female or two. It has been observed in birds that, when males and females differ dramatically in appearance, the females are preferentially mating with a few "pretty boys"; those that have elaborate plumage colors or ornamentation. As…
grrlscientist | August 24, 2007tags: evolution, helping behavior, cooperative breeding, suberb fairy-wren, Malurus cyaneus, birds
A breeding male superb fairy-wren, Malurus cyaneus.
Image: Martin Fowlie.
Here's a question for all of you: whose offspring would do better; those raised only by their parents, or those raised by their parents in addition to an extended family group?
Cooperative breeding is a breeding strategy where some individuals postpone their own reproductive efforts in order to help others in the family group to raise their offspring. Typically, these helpers are genetically related to the offspring…
grrlscientist | August 24, 2007tags: vervet monkey, Cercopithecus aethiops, sexual harassment, Nachu, Kenya, behavior, interspecies communication
A young vervet monkey, Chlorocebus pygerythrus.
Image: shashamane.
If you live in the small village of Nachu in Kenya, watch out, because a group of approximately 300 marauding monkeys is out to steal your food, sexually harass your women and attack and kill your livestock! In a truly amazing incidence of interspecies communication, a group of vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus pygerythrus, is using sexual harassment to intimidate women and children, who are responsible for growing…
voltagegate | August 23, 2007
When we think of communication, foremost on our mind is our own sophisticated means of language - writing and speaking mainly - communicating ideas or concepts through our manipulation of sound and symbology.
Evolutionarily speaking, this is a recent development; there are certainly no written documents from the time of the Australpithocenes or Homo erectus, and scientists can only guess at their ability to use a complex language.
Scent marking, then, is a much more ancient, much more prevalent form of communication between animals. Even humans use scents for communicative purposes - we use…
grrlscientist | August 22, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, social behavior, cooperative breeding, environment, global warming, climate change, African starlings, birds
Superb starling, Lamprotornis superbus, a cooperative breeding savanna dweller that is abundant throughout northeast Africa.
Image: Dustin R. Rubenstein [larger]
Postponing one's own reproductive efforts to help other individuals raise their offspring might seem like a bad choice, evolutionarily speaking. But cooperative breeding, as this behavior is known, is fairly common in the animal kingdom, although the reasons underlying the evolution…
grrlscientist | August 21, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, squirrels, rattlesnakes, tail-flagging, behavior, biology
A mother squirrel rapidly waves her tail to warn off a rattlesnake in a confrontation staged by researchers in May 1987. Adult squirrels are immune to rattlesnake venom, but their offspring are vulnerable. New infrared research found that heat from the mother's tail sends an alarming signal to the slithery predators.
Image: Donald H. Owings, UC Davis.
Researchers have long been mystified by the defensive behaviors exhibited by California ground squirrels, Spermophilus beecheyi, when they are…
grrlscientist | August 3, 2007Finally, a study will be published that documents what we all have known ever since women entered the workforce: men are admired and are financially rewarded for getting angry at work, whereas women who get angry at work are financially penalized and generally viewed as incompetent.
This research, conducted by Victoria Brescoll, who is a post-doctoral scholar at Yale University, will be presented at this weekend's annual meeting of the research and teaching organization, Academy of Management.
To do this research, Brescoll had her study participants watch videos of men and women job…
grrlscientist | July 27, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, animals, predict death, Oscar the cat, New England Journal of Medicine
Oscar the cat provides comfort to the dying.
According to an article that was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a two-year-old cat that lives in Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, can correctly predict impending death among the residents. Oscar the cat has a habit of curling up next to patients who are in their final hours, and so far, he has been observed to be correct in 25 cases.
"He doesn't make many mistakes. He seems to…
grrlscientist | July 18, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, flight speed, birds, ornithology, aerodynamics, evolution
Not Bad, But Not Perfect
A peregrine falcon keeps a close eye as she circles her nest in St. Louis.
A new survey of 138 species of birds finds that closely-related birds fly at roughly the same speeds and that no birds are perfect flying specimens.
Image: Tom Gannam (AP) [larger]
When it comes to flight speeds, human-made contraptions, such as airplanes, conform to basic aerodynamic scaling rules, which generate predictions based on how much an object weighs and how large its wings are. However, those…
voltagegate | July 18, 2007
Welcome to the Tangled Bank and to The Voltage Gate. The theme of this 84th edition of TB is science in Ancient Greece, so we'll be exploring what that meant to them, and jumping ahead a couple millenia to find out what it means to us.
I want to begin this edition with an important announcement. Aetiology's Tara Smith has some news about the Clergy Letter Project (and Evolution Sunday). This founder, Mike Zimmerman, is trying to create a list of scientists who would be willing to answer the more technical questions posed about science and evolution by participating clergy. Tara has all the…
grrlscientist | July 10, 2007tags: electric fish, Brienomyrus brachyistius, mormyrids, fish, behavior, evolution
Image: JEB Biologists
As they swim through their muddy riverine homes in east Africa, the African elephantfishes use a special organ at the base of their tail to produce weak electrical pulses that enable them to sense their surroundings, detect prey, communicate with each other and, as it was recently discovered, to find a mate. Surprisingly, after listening to their electrical "buzzes", scientists discovered that these fishes engage in behavior that is remarkably similar to the courtship duets that…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2007tags: chatterbox, talkative, behavior, gender studies
Contrary to the commonly accepted urban myth that claims that women talk more than men, a recently published study has instead found that men talk as much as women do, and both sexes speak about 16,000 words per day.
Originally, the researchers read in "The Female Brain," by Louann Brizendine, that women speak approximately 20,000 words each day, while men speak a mere 7,000. So James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, who was the senior author of the study, and his colleagues decided to learn the truth.
"This…
grrlscientist | June 20, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, superb starling, Spreo superbus, Lamprotornis superbus, birds, behavior, infidelity
Superb starling, Lamprotornis (Spreo) superbus.
These small birds are commonly found in open woodlands and savannahs throughout Northeast Africa.
Image: Hogle Zoo, Utah.
While it is widely known that males of many species seek out extra-pair copulations in order to produce as many offspring as possible, the reasons for female "infidelity" are much more complex. For example, a study was recently published that showed how a bird species uses sexual politics to ensure maximal…
scientificactivist | June 19, 2007For this round of Ask a ScienceBlogger, the question is "Is sunshine good for you?"
It's a beautiful sunny day outside. And, of course, you're stuck in the lab (or the office, classroom, or daily holding tank of your choice). Although you may thumb your nose at those who seem to have nothing better to do than have fun in the sun, don't be so quick to judge. In fact, your lack of sun exposure might be partially to blame for that not-so-sunny disposition of yours. Or worse.
Your body operates on a 24-hour circadian rhythm, and regular daily exposure to sunlight keeps it running smoothly. So,…