behavioral biology
gregladen | March 22, 2008A common presumption is that behavior is part of phenotype, and since phenotype arises from genotype (plus/minus Reaction Norm), that there can be a study of "behavioral genetics." This is certainly an overstatement (or oversimplification) for organisms with extensive and/or complex neural systems, such as humans and mice. Neural systems probably evolved (not initially, but eventually) to disassociate behavior with the kind of pre-determined micro-management of behavior that a simple gene-behavior link requires. However, in organisms with neural systems the size of the period at the end of…
gregladen | March 3, 2008A colleague and grad student of mine, Rob, just sent me the following question, slightly edited here:
A student in my intro class asked me a good question the other day to which I had no answer. When did smiling cease to be a threat gesture? I have a couple of ideas. One is that with reduced canines, smiling became a way to say "look, I have small canines, I am not a threat to you." The other is that smiling is based more on a "fear-grin" than a threat. Under this idea, smiling might have been a way of showing deference to others. If everyone shows deference, it would be egalitarian, until…
gregladen | February 28, 2008This is a photograph of wild western lowland gorillas copulating in, sort of, the missionary position. This shot was taken in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo.
The female gorilla in the photograph, nicknamed "Leah" by researchers, has twice made history. In 2005 Breuer and others observed her using tools--another never-before-seen behavior for her kind in the wild. Leah tested the depth of a pool of water with a stick before wading into it in Mbeli Bai, where researchers have been monitoring the gorilla population since 1995.
"Understanding the behavior of our…
gregladen | February 20, 2008Despite having only a couple of beers, I'm a little fuzzy this morning, but I do want to give a short update last night's Cafe Scientifique at the Bryant Lake Bowl (sponsored by the Bell Museum of Natural History).
First, thanks to everyone for coming, and I'm truly sorry for those of you (Mike, Rob, Betsy, Chris, and countless others) who could not make it it. It was nice to have a sold-out 'performance' but not nice that people schlepped all the way to LynnLake in sub zero weather! But, in the end, you probably had more fun drinking and bowling than sitting listening to me.
Shanai…
gregladen | February 14, 2008Contains brief nudity and sexually suggestive material.
This is very long, but if you are at home bored on Valentine's day, you might as well watch it.
gregladen | February 13, 2008Can you believe this guy? Check it out:
The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once proposed that humanity began with cooking. [a Twin Cities anthropologist] says love may have begun with cooking, as well.
...
The earliest human ancestors, some kind of chimp-like apes, were living off raw plant foods and probably doing a bit of hunting like chimpanzees do now.
And then, somebody discovers the ability to control fire. Everybody argues about when this happened. We're saying it happened about 2 million years ago. Suddenly, all this food that was previously poisonous or indigestible…
gregladen | February 12, 2008One of the most compelling argument that the story of Noah's Ark is made up is the implausibility of having animals like tigers and lions together with animals like lambs and deer on the same boat for very long. The big carnivores would eventually eat the little cute furry things. The bunnies would be the first to go. But new evidence, shown on the Miracle Pet Show disproves this objection.
So, if it is god's will, or if people just darn try hard enough, anybody and anything can get along with anything and anybody. Put that on an inspirational poster and hang it, I say!
Or is there…
gregladen | February 10, 2008When reading The Voyage it is impossible to miss the observation that much of the time Darwin was engaged in adolescent boy behavior: Pulling the heads off insects, noting how long they would wiggle after cut in half, closely examining the ooze and guts, occupied much of his time. Obviously, careful observation and a strong stomach were not all that was required to think up Natural Selection and his other theories, or the Origin of Species would have been written dozens of times by dozens of grown up kids.
In the following passages, Darwin is still along the Atlantic Coast, in "The…
gregladen | January 26, 2008In an exclusive preview of his new book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language, and the way it expresses the workings of our minds. By analyzing common sentences and words, he shows us how, in what we say and how we say it, we're communicating much more than we realize.
gregladen | January 23, 2008In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence. We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we've come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.
gregladen | January 21, 2008Is chimpanzee food sharing an example of food for sex?
One of the most important transitions in human evolution may have been the incorporation of regular food sharing into the day to day ecology of our species or our ancestors. Although this has been recognized as potentially significant for some time, it was probably the Africanist archaeologist Glynn Isaac who impressed on the academic community the importance of the origins of food sharing as a key evolutionary moment. At that time, food sharing among apes was thought to be very rare, outside of mother-infant dyads. Further research…
gregladen | January 12, 2008Armed with a backhoe and a handful of markers, Deborah Gordon studies ant colonies in the Arizona desert. She asks: How do these chitinous creatures get down to business -- and even multitask when they need to -- with no language, memory or visible leadership? Her answers could lead to a better understanding of all complex systems, from the brain to the Web.
gregladen | January 12, 2008Cooperation in nature is very common, and papers about how unlikely cooperation in nature would be are also common. Especially in Nature. (The Journal.)
The latest paper is nicely summarized in a press release from the University of Bristol:
Cooperative behaviour is common in many species, including humans. Given that cooperative individuals can often be exploited, it is not immediately clear why such behaviour has evolved.
...
Professor John McNamara and colleagues demonstrate that when individuals in a population are choosy about their partners, cooperativeness is rewarded and tends to…
gregladen | January 10, 2008Author Robert Wright explains "non-zero-sumness," a game-theory term describing how players with linked fortunes tend to cooperate for mutual benefit. This dynamic has guided our biological and cultural evolution, he says -- but our unwillingness to understand one another, as in the clash between the Muslim world and the West, will lead to all of us losing the "game." Once we recognize that life is a non-zero-sum game, in which we all must cooperate to succeed, it will force us to see that moral progress -- a move toward empathy -- is our only hope.
gregladen | January 10, 2008 Why is there no Birth Control Pill for men?
This latest "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question will certainly engender a wide range of responses from the Scienceblogs.com team. Answers may address physiology, endocrinology, pharmacology, economics, and other areas of scientific thinking and practice. The answer I'd like to propose can be summed up in two closely linked words pilfered from the question itself:
Men. Control.
Myriad aspects of life can be understood by recognizing a single critical fact, and the layered, sometimes complex, deeply biological effects of that fact. Males, by…
gregladen | January 3, 2008Daily alcohol use by males has been shown to increase sexual arousal and decrease sexual inhibition.
In Fruit Flies.
The current (Jan 2) issue of PLoS ONE includes a paper by Lee et al exploring thye physiological side of changes in sexual behavior under the influence of alcohol, with an eye towards understanding this process in humans, using an animal model.
Alcohol has a strong causal relationship with sexual arousal and disinhibited sexual behavior in humans; however, the physiological support for this notion is largely lacking and thus a suitable animal model to address this issue is…
gregladen | December 21, 2007Humour appears to develop from aggression caused by male hormones, according to a study published in this week's Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal.... Makes total sense to me. And if you think I'm kidding, you can stuff it.
This is the finding of a newly published study by Sam Shuster, emeritus professor of dermatology from the Department of Dermatology, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, in the U.K.
This study involved measuring responses of subjects categorized by age and sex (and other variables) and showed that individuals with higher levels of testosterone (adult men…
gregladen | December 19, 2007African American children may have reduced verbal ability compared to other children to a degree that is roughly equivalent to missing a year in school, according to a recently published paper. Is this evidence of a racial difference?
The study by Sampson et.al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences included more than 200 children aged 6-12 living in Chicago, and followed these children over seven years. The study controlled for poverty, and interestingly, poverty was not found to be a good predictor of differences in verbal ability.
The researchers consider…