Behavioral Science News

November 25, 2024

Top Headlines

Friendly Social Behaviors Are Contagious for Chimpanzees

Nov. 20, 2024 — Chimpanzees are more likely to engage in play or groom each other if they see others performing these social behaviors first, researchers ...

Bats' Amazing Plan B for When They Can't Hear

Nov. 25, 2024 — When bats can't hear, new research finds that these hearing-dependent animals employ a remarkable compensation ...

New Model of Neuronal Circuit Provides Insight on Eye Movement

Nov. 22, 2024 — Working with week-old zebrafish larva, researchers decoded how the connections formed by a network of neurons in the brainstem guide the fishes' gaze. The study found that a simplified artificial circuit, based on the architecture of this neuronal ...

Sweet Tooth Ethiopian Wolves Seen Feeding on Nectar

Nov. 20, 2024 — For the first time, Ethiopian wolves have been documented feeding on the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker flowers. This is the first large carnivore species ever to be documented feeding on nectar. In doing so, the wolves may act as pollinators -- ...

Latest Headlines

updated 4:49pm EST

Caste Differentiation in Ants

Nov. 22, 2024 — Scientists have revealed how a specific hormone regulates ant caste differentiation by phenotypic measurements of organ-level developmental changes and matching transcriptome ...

Stress Is Contagious -- For Animals, Too

Nov. 13, 2024 — What happens to animals when their friends are stressed? Is it possible to document the spread of stress within groups of ...

These Wild Chimpanzees Play as Adults to Better Cooperate as a Group

Nov. 21, 2024 — Compared to children, adults don't play as much, but social play into adulthood is considered a universal human trait. Play has a role in building tolerance, cohesion, bonding, and cooperation. By ...

Automated 3D Computer Vision Model Offers a New Tool to Measure and Understand Dairy Cow Behavior and Welfare

Nov. 20, 2024 — Dairy cows typically rest for 10 or more hours a day, so a dry, clean, and comfortable place -- such as a freestall -- to lie down and rest is ...

Diverse Diets of Civets in Borneo Rainforest Allow Them to Live in Same Geographical Area

Nov. 20, 2024 — Typically, closely related animal species have difficulty coexisting because they are competing for similar resources. Despite eating the same figs, ...

Vultures and Artificial Intelligence(s) as Death Detectors: High-Tech Approach for Wildlife Research and Conservation

Nov. 19, 2024 — In order to use remote locations to record and assess the behavior of wildlife and environmental conditions, the GAIA Initiative developed an ...

How Children Learned for 99% of Human History

Nov. 19, 2024 — Unlike kids in the United States, hunter-gatherer children in the Congo Basin have often learned how to hunt, identify edible plants and care for babies by the tender age of six or seven. This rapid ...

How Cells Habituate

Nov. 19, 2024 — Up until recently, habituation -- a simple form of learning -- was deemed the exclusive domain of complex organisms with brains and nervous systems, such as worms, insects, birds, and mammals. But a ...

New Model Can Help Understand Coexistence in Nature

Nov. 18, 2024 — Different species of seabirds can coexist on small, isolated islands despite eating the same kind of fish. A researcher has been involved in developing a mathematical model that can be used to better ...

One or Many? Exploring the Population Groups of the Largest Animal on Earth

Nov. 15, 2024 — Hunted nearly to extinction during 20th century whaling, the Antarctic blue whale, the world's largest animal, went from a population size of roughly 200,000 to little more than 300. The most recent ...

Scientific Thought on Emotions in Animals

Nov. 14, 2024 — How do animal behavior researchers feel about the feelings of animals? A new survey helps to answer that ...

Backyard Birds Learn from Their New Neighbors When Moving House

Nov. 14, 2024 — Scientists have found a trigger for social learning in wild animals. An experiment on great tits has pinpointed a single factor --immigration -- that can cause birds to pay close attention to others, ...

Behavioral Analysis in Mice: More Precise Results Despite Fewer Animals

Nov. 14, 2024 — Researchers are utilizing artificial intelligence to analyze the behavior of laboratory mice more efficiently and reduce the number of animals in ...

AI Method Can Spot Potential Disease Faster, Better Than Humans, Study Finds

Nov. 14, 2024 — A 'deep learning' artificial intelligence model can identify pathology, or signs of disease, in images of animal and human tissue much faster, and often more accurately, than people. The ...

How Conflicting Memories of Sex and Starvation Compete to Drive Behavior, Study in Worms Shows

Nov. 14, 2024 — Two conflicting memories can both be activated in a worm's brain, even if only one memory actively drives the animal's behavior, finds a new ...

NeuroMechFly V2: Simulating How Fruit Flies See, Smell, and Navigate

Nov. 14, 2024 — Scientists have advanced their NeuroMechFly model, simulating fruit fly movement in the real world. With integrated vision and smell, NeuroMechFly v2 helps us understand brain-body coordination, ...

Bluetooth Technology Unlocks Urban Animal Secrets

Nov. 13, 2024 — Mobile phones could be the key to a cheaper and more reliable way of tracking animals for ecology and conservation research, according to a new ...

Elephant Turns a Hose Into a Sophisticated Showering Tool

Nov. 8, 2024 — Tool use isn't unique to humans. Chimpanzees use sticks as tools. Dolphins, crows, and elephants are known for their tool-use abilities, too. Now a report highlights elephants' remarkable ...

New Study Maps Dramatic 100-Million-Year Explosion in Color Signals Used by Animals

Nov. 7, 2024 — A recent study finds that color vision evolved in animals more than 100 million years before the emergence of colorful fruits and flowers. And there has been a dramatic explosion of color signals in ...

Bee Gene Specifies Collective Behavior

Nov. 1, 2024 — Researchers investigate how the complex, cooperative behavior of honey bees (Apis mellifera) is genetically programmed so that it can be passed on to subsequent generations. They found an answer in ...

Echolocating Bats Use an Acoustic Cognitive Map for Navigation

Oct. 31, 2024 — Echolocating bats have been found to possess an acoustic cognitive map of their home range, enabling them to navigate over kilometer-scale distances using echolocation ...

Why Elephants Never Forget but Fleas Have, Well, the Attention Span of a Flea

Oct. 31, 2024 — Researchers have developed a model to calculate how quickly or slowly an organism should ideally learn in its surroundings. An organism's ideal learning rate depends on the pace of environmental ...

Oct. 30, 2024 — In common marmosets, the brain regions that process social interactions develop very slowly, extending until early adulthood, like in humans. During this time, all group members are involved in ...

More Social Species Live Longer

Oct. 29, 2024 — New research has revealed that species that are more social live longer and produce offspring for a greater time-span. This is the first study on this topic which spans the animal kingdom, from ...

Are We Missing the Mark on Biodiversity? 90% of Countries Ignore Key Behavior Changes

Oct. 28, 2024 — There is a yawning gap between national policies to enhance biodiversity and the individual and small group behavioral changes that are critical to making a real ...

An Individual's Reward-Seeking Strategy Reflects Responses to Nicotine

Oct. 24, 2024 — Individualistic reward-seeking strategies predict responses to nicotine among mice living in a micro-society, according to a new ...

Evaluating the Link Between Chemicals and Declining Insect Populations

Oct. 24, 2024 — Employing a library of more than 1,000 chemicals, scientists investigated how agrochemicals affect insect populations. The scientists found that exposure to non-fatal amounts of 57 percent of the ...

Plastic Chemical Causes Causes DNA Breakage and Chromosome Defects in Sex Cells, Study Finds

Oct. 24, 2024 — A new study conducted in roundworms finds that a common plastic ingredient causes breaks in DNA strands, resulting in egg cells with the wrong number of ...

Bird Study Finds Sons Help Their Parents Less Than Daughters Because They're Scouting Future Prospects

Oct. 24, 2024 — Male birds help their parents less than females because they're too busy scouting for new places to live and breed, a study ...

Study of Chick Peeps Could Improve Understanding of Animal Emotions

Oct. 24, 2024 — Understanding animal emotions has been a long-running question at the forefront of welfare studies, but a new study may hold the key to decoding the chatter. The answer involves two baby chickens and ...