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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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What is the value of play?
[This is a quick summary of the second chapter of my book, Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals on play and recreation. The thesis of the book is that we can better understand human...
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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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Cats Can Find Their Own Kittens by Smell; They Just Don’t Care
[This post is a collaboration with Soraya Alli, a student at the Macaulay Honors College at John Jay College.] An animal’s sense of smell (olfaction) plays a major role in mother-offspring recognition...
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The Value of Social Relationships During Aging in Female Rhesus Macaques
Rhesus monkeys have an intricate social structure. There is a dominance hierarchy, meaning that not all individuals enjoy the same rank in the group. This also effects the value that individuals gain...
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Does Trump Fit the Evolutionary Role of Narcissistic Sociopath?
[This essay first appeared in Arc Digital and was co-authored by Nathan H. Lents and Robert Trivers. Credit for the thesis and most of the evolutionary analysis belongs to Trivers.] There is no...
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How Likely is Intelligent Life?
Since the invention of the telescope, humankind has been faced with the overwhelming notion that the universe is vastly larger than our own little world. This also brought the exhilarating but...
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Stranger Danger! Mark Moffett Explains Human and Animal Societies
Yesterday evening, I had dinner with my friend Mark Moffett. As always, we had a wide-ranging discussion about human and animal behavior and this reminded me just how insightful his work on animal...
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