The battle of the sexes can be explained at its deepest level, writes Meredith Small, as a war of different mating strategies. In her intriguing and provocative book about females and sex, Small concentrates on primates - the prosimians, monkeys, and apes, whose ancestry we share - to show how females have evolved to be highly sexual creatures. Using nonhuman female primates as a gauge, she describes the sexual and reproductive strategies of our nearest cousins to demonstrate that just as males are strategists in the reproductive game, females also search for good partners, enjoy sex, and keep their own reproductive interests in mind. Female Choices opens with the evolution of sexual reproduction and of males and females as distinct forms. Small then introduces primates and gives a detailed history of the average female's life cycle. After devoting chapters to sexuality, reproduction, and sexual selection theory - the theory behind female mate choice - she discusses what female primates actually do. Drawing on her own firsthand observation of nonhuman primates, she shows that some are highly "promiscuous, " others prefer several unfamiliar males, and some apparently make no choices at all. The behavior of the undiscriminating females often affects the evolution of relationships between the sexes and can influence the social structure of a species. In a final chapter on human behavior, Small maintains that the human pair-bond is a tenuous compromise made by the two sexes to bring up highly dependent infants. But, she writes, because both sexes also have a "natural" tendency to seek out other partners, that bond is always at risk. Small insists that female choice is not necessarily sexualselection, but is nonetheless important to female fitness. Sure to provoke controversy, her book will add a new twist to an exciting field of research while offering significant clues as to the origins of our own sexuality.

Liegen Stereotype und Vorurteile in der Natur des Menschen? Das Buch vermittelt eine Einsicht in psychologische Prozesse und Mechanismen, die Stereotypen und Vorurteilen zugrunde liegen. Dabei zeigt es auf, welchen Anteil diese an Rassismus, Sexismus und anderer gruppenbasierter Diskriminierung haben. Basierend auf aktuellen Forschungsergebnissen aus der Sozialpsychologie regt das Buch zur Selbsteinsicht an. Es macht erfahrbar, wie leicht Stereotype und Vorurteile unsere Wahrnehmung, unser Denken und unser Handeln beeinflussen - auch dann, wenn wir uns selbst fur tolerant halten. Erfahren Sie, warum es nicht nur unrealistisch, sondern sogar schadlich sein kann, das eigene Denken und Handeln fur unvoreingenommen, objektiv und fair zu halten. Durch dieses Buch werden Sie herausfinden, warum viele unserer Versuche, tolerant und vorurteilsfrei zu sein, oft zum Scheitern verurteilt sind. Letztendlich erhalten Sie Denkanreize, wie Diskriminierung abgebaut und Chancengleichheit erreicht werden kann. UEber die Autorin Juliane Degner ist Professorin fur Sozialpsychologie an der Universitat Hamburg. Sie forscht vor allem zu automatischen Prozessen der sozialen Wahrnehmung und Eindrucksbildung und welchen Einfluss soziale Kategorisierungsprozesse, Stereotype und Vorurteile darauf haben.

Advances in the Study of Behavior is the leading series in its field. Each volume includes a variety of review essays by experts providing authoritative overviews of key areas of current interest that are invaluable to the teacher, student, and researcher in the field of behavior, whether psychologist or biologist. This volume continues the tradition of excellence in the study of behavior by covering a whole range of biological and psychological research. Each of the chapters presents new ideas, with a particularly interesting approach to sexual coercion. The volume as a whole has a particular strength in the area of behavioral development, which is the main topic of the last three chapters.

Constantine Slobodchikoff and colleagues synthesize the results of their long-running study of Gunnison s prairie dogs ("Cynomys gunnisoni"), one of the keystone species of the short-grass prairie ecosystem. They set their research in the context of the biology of the five "Cynomys" species found in the United States and Mexico, and detail their investigation into the prairie dogs sophisticated system of barks, yips, and chirps, which Slobodchikoff argues represents a referential communication capable of fine distinctions among predators.

Seen as vermin that spoiled valuable rangeland, prairie dogs were long the subject of eradication campaigns and are now threatened by habitat loss and the loss of genetic diversity. The authors hope their research will help to pull the prairie dog back from the brink of extinction, as well as foster an appreciation of larger conservation challenges. By examining the complex factors behind prairie dog decline, we can begin to understand the problems inherent in our adversarial relationship with the natural world. Understanding these interactions is the first step toward a more sustainable future.

From foraging patterns in a single tree to social interactions across a home range, how primates use space is a key question in the field of primate behavioral ecology. Drawing on the latest advances in spatial analysis tools, this book offers practical guidance on applying geographic information systems (GIS) to central questions in primatology. An initial methodological section discusses niche modelling, home range analysis and agent-based modelling, with a focus on remote data collection. Research-based chapters demonstrate how ecologists apply this technology to a suite of topics including: calculating the intensity of use of both range and travel routes, assessing the impacts of logging, mining and hunting, and informing conservation strategies.

This work surveys the major ideas of animal behavior, but does not trivialize important issues or controversies. It covers the important issues of history, development, speciation, genetics, and even animal rights.

Here is a uniquely modern approach to the study of physiological diversity that builds on the tradition established by C. Ladd Prosser's Comparative Animal Physiology. Responding to the need for a rigorously up-to-date, comprehensive survey of function and integrative systems in a variety of species, which is also easily accessible to the user, Dr. Prosser has delivered a thoroughly revised Fourth Edition in a convenient two-volume format. This carefully designed framework lets each volume zero-in on distinct aspects of comparative physiology normally studied as a whole unit. From the study of genetically replicating molecules to investigations of adaptive modulation, these two companion volumes offer an all-encompassing view of the field. With their contemporary approach, scholarly editing, flexible format, and detailed contents, Neural and Integrative Animal Physiology and Environmental and Metabolic Animal Physiology will stand together as the authoritative source in the field.

"This book is timely, and it provides a well-researched, compact entry to this literature." Animal Behaviour

Communication in the Chiroptera reviews the available information about communication in chiroptera including brilliant suggestions on the relationship of bat communication to the general subject of communication."

"Moynihan s book is not merely an attractive and readable descriptive synthesis, but an acute commentary on the development of current theory, opening new areas and refreshingly examining cherished models." W. John Smith, University of Pennsylvania

This book summarizes the state of our knowledge about communication in cephalopods, including squids, cuttlefishes, octopuses, and related forms, and assesses the comparative and theoretical implications of what we know."

Fressen und Nicht-gefressen-Werden, Paarungspartner finden und Junge erfolgreich aufziehen - diese grundlegenden Prinzipien der Verhaltensbiologie werden in dem Lehrbuch ubersichtlich und anhand aktueller Beispiele dargestellt. Neben dem Thema Verhaltensbiologie als integrative Disziplin liegt der inhaltliche Schwerpunkt bei Fragen der Evolution des Verhaltens, der Anpassung, der Verhaltensoekologie, Soziobiologie und Evolutionsbiologie. Die Neuauflage wurde um einige eindrucksvolle Fotos erganzt, das Kapitel zum Sozialverhalten erweitert.

Der Vogel singt morgens, weil... ... es hell wird. ... sich der Hormonstatus andert. ... er damit Rivalen aus seinem Revier fern halt. ... Weibchen durch den Gesang bei der Partnerwahl beeinflusst werden. Marc Naguib erklart in diesem Lehrbuch die grundlegenden Methoden der qualitativen und quantitativen Erfassung von Verhalten. Dabei werden rein deskriptive Beobachtungsmethoden sowie auch experimentelle Ansatze von Versuchsplanen berucksichtigt. Die Methoden der Verhaltensbiologie erfassen und erklaren Tierverhalten einfach und anschaulich.

How dogs defied science and changed the way we think about animals What do dogs really think of us? What do dogs know and understand of the world? Do their emotions feel like our own? Do they love like we do? Driven by his own love of dogs, Charles Darwin was nagged by questions like these. To root out answers, his contemporaries toyed with dog sign language. To reveal clues, they made special puzzle boxes and elaborate sniff tests using old socks. Later, the same perennial questions about the minds of dogs drove Pavlov and Pasteur to unspeakable cruelty in their search for truth. These big names in science influenced leagues of psychologists and animal behaviourists, each building upon the ideas and received wisdom of previous generations but failing to see what was staring them in the face - that the very methods humans used to study dogs' minds were influencing the insights reflected back. To discover the impressive cognitive feats that dogs are capable of, a new approach was needed. Treated with love and compassion, dogs would open up their unique perspective on the world, and a new breed of scientists would be provided answers to life's biggest questions. Wonderdog is the story of those dogs - a historical account of how we came to know what dogs are capable of. It's a celebration of animal minds and the secrets they hold. And it's a love letter to science, through the good times and the bad.

Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male? Or a rat who refused to push a lever for food when he saw that doing so caused another rat to be shocked? Aren't these clear signs that animals have recognizable emotions and moral intelligence? With "Wild Justice" Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce unequivocally answer yes.

Marrying years of behavioral and cognitive research with compelling and moving anecdotes, Bekoff and Pierce reveal that animals exhibit a broad repertoire of moral behaviors, including fairness, empathy, trust, and reciprocity. Underlying these behaviors is a complex and nuanced range of emotions, backed by a high degree of intelligence and surprising behavioral flexibility. Animals, in short, are incredibly adept social beings, relying on rules of conduct to navigate intricate social networks that are essential to their survival. Ultimately, Bekoff and Pierce draw the astonishing conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species: morality is an evolved trait that we unquestionably share with other social mammals.

Sure to be controversial, "Wild Justice" offers not just cutting-edge science, but a provocative call to rethink our relationship with--and our responsibilities toward--our fellow animals.

As our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees offer tantalizing clues about the behavior of early human ancestors. This book provides a rich and detailed portrait of chimpanzee social life in the wild, synthesizing hundreds of thousands of hours of research at seven long-term field sites. Why are the social lives of males and females so different? Why do groups of males sometimes seek out and kill neighboring individuals? Do chimpanzees cooperate when they hunt monkeys? Is their vocal behaviour like human speech? Are there different chimpanzee 'cultures'? Addressing these questions and more, Adam Arcadi presents a fascinating introduction to the chimpanzee social universe and the challenges we face in trying to save this species from extinction. With extensive notes organized by field site and an appendix describing field methods, this book is indispensable for students, researchers, and anyone else interested in the remarkable and complex world of these intelligent apes.

This book traces the evolution of the dog, from its origins about 15,000 years ago up to recent times. The timing of dog domestication receives attention, with comparisons between different genetics-based models and archaeological evidence. Allometric patterns between dogs and their ancestors, wolves, shed light on the nature of the morphological changes that dogs underwent. Dog burials highlight a unifying theme of the whole book: the development of a distinctive social bond between dogs and people; the book also explores why dogs and people relate so well to each other. Though cosmopolitan in overall scope, the greatest emphasis is on the New World, with an entire chapter devoted to dogs of the arctic regions, mostly in the New World. Discussion of several distinctive modern roles of dogs underscores the social bond between dogs and people.

Few animals have a worse reputation than the vulture. But is it deserved? With Vulture, Katie Fallon offers an irresistible argument to the contrary, tracing a year in the life of a typical North American turkey vulture. Turkey vultures, also known as buzzards, are the most widely distributed and abundant scavenging birds of prey on the planet, found from central Canada to the southern tip of Argentina and nearly everywhere in between. Deftly drawing on the most up-to-date scientific papers and articles and weaving those in with interviews with world-renowned raptor and vulture experts and her own compelling natural history writing, Fallon examines all aspects of the bird’s natural history: breeding, incubating eggs, raising chicks, migrating, and roosting. The result is an intimate portrait of an underappreciated bird—one you’ll never look at in the same way again.

Are selfishness and individuality--rather than kindness and cooperation--basic to biological nature? Does a "selfish gene" create universal sexual conflict? In "The Genial Gene, "Joan Roughgarden forcefully rejects these and other ideas that have come to dominate the study of animal evolution. Building on her brilliant and innovative book "Evolution's Rainbow, "in which she challenged accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation, Roughgarden upends the notion of the selfish gene and the theory of sexual selection and develops a compelling and controversial alternative theory called social selection. This scientifically rigorous, model-based challenge to an important tenet of neo-Darwinian theory emphasizes cooperation, elucidates the factors that contribute to evolutionary success in a gene pool or animal social system, and vigorously demonstrates that to identify Darwinism with selfishness and individuality misrepresents the facts of life as we now know them.

Understanding the interaction between cooperation and conflict in establishing effective social behaviour is a fundamental challenge facing societies. Reflecting the breadth of current research in this area, this volume brings together experts from biology to political science to examine the cooperation–conflict interface at multiple levels, from genes to human societies. Exploring both the exciting new directions and the biggest challenges in their fields, the authors focus on identifying commonalities across species and disciplines to help understand what features are shared broadly and what are limited to specific contexts. Each chapter is written to be accessible to students and researchers from interdisciplinary backgrounds, with text boxes explaining terminology and concepts that may not be familiar across disciplinary boundaries, while being a valuable resource to experts in their fields.

With heart-shaped face, buff back and wings, and pure white underparts, the barn owl is a distinctive and much-loved bird which has fascinated people from many cultures throughout history. How did the barn owl colonise the world? What adaptations have made this bird so successful? How is the increasing impact of human disturbance affecting these animals? Answering these questions and more, Roulin brings together the main global perspectives on the evolution, ecology and behaviour of the barn owl and its relatives, discussing topics such as the high reproductive potential, physiology, social and family interaction, pronounced colour variation and global distribution. Accessible and beautifully illustrated, this definitive volume on the barn owl is for researchers, professionals and graduate students in ornithology, animal behaviour, ecology, conservation biology and evolutionary biology, and will also appeal to amateur ornithologists and nature lovers.

Throughout their lives animals must complete many tasks, including finding food, avoiding predators, attracting mates, and navigating through a complex and dynamic environment. Consequently, they have evolved a staggering array of sensory organs that are fundamental to survival and reproduction and shape much of their evolution and behaviour. Sensory ecology deals with how animals acquire, process, and use information in their lives, and the sensory systems involved. It investigates the type of information that is gathered by animals, how it is used in a range of behaviours, and the evolution of such traits. It deals with both mechanistic questions (e.g. how sensory receptors capture information from the environment, and how the physical attributes of the environment affect information transmission) and functional questions (e.g. the adaptive significance of the information used by the animal to make a decision). Recent research has dealt more explicitly with how sensory systems are involved with and even drive evolutionary change, including the formation of new species. Sensory Ecology, Behaviour, and Evolution provides a broad introduction to sensory ecology across a wide range of taxonomic groups, covering all the various sensory modalities (e.g. sound, visual, chemical, magnetic, and electric) relating to diverse areas spanning anti-predator strategies, foraging, mate choice, navigation and more, with the aim being to illustrate key principles and differences. This accessible textbook is suitable for senior undergraduates, graduate students, and professional academics taking courses or conducting research in sensory ecology/biology, neuroethology, behavioural and evolutionary ecology, communication, and signalling. It will also be of relevance and use to psychologists interested in sensory information and behaviour.

In einer unterhaltsamen wie anspruchsvollen und packenden Zeitreise entlang der diversen Theorien zur Entwicklung des Lebendigen, fuhrt uns der Altmeister der Systemtheorie des Erkennens von der "heroischen Phase" uber die "ideologische" bis hin zur heutigen "systemischen Phase." Seine Auseinandersetzung mit zahllosen Biologen und ihren Theorien grundet auf die beiden Ansichten, dass man den Zustand von Theorien am besten aus deren Geschichte heraus versteht und dass ein wechselseitiger Zusammenhang zwischen Zeitgeist und biologischen Theorien besteht. Professor Riedl legt uns mit diesem Buch eine Kulturgeschichte der Evolutionstheorie vor mit dem Ziel, den Wandel von Einsichten im Laufe unserer kulturellen Entwicklung zu sehen und zu erkennen. Ein Muss fur jeden Biologen und Philosophen."

Mother and infant negotiate over food; two high-status males jockey for power; female kin band together to get their way. It happens among humans and it happens among our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom, the great apes of Africa. In this eye-opening book, we see precisely how such events unfold in chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas: through a spontaneous, mutually choreographed dance of actions, gestures, and vocalizations in which social partners create meaning and come to understand each other.

Using dynamic systems theory, an approach employed to study human communication, Barbara King is able to demonstrate the genuine complexity of apes' social communication, and the extent to which their interactions generate meaning. As King describes, apes create meaning primarily through their body movements--and go well beyond conveying messages about food, mating, or predators. Readers come to know the captive apes she has observed, and others across Africa as well, and to understand "the process of creating social meaning."

This new perspective not only acquaints us with our closest living relatives, but informs us about a possible pathway for the evolution of language in our own species. King's theory challenges the popular idea that human language is instinctive, with rules and abilities hardwired into our brains. Rather, "The Dynamic Dance" suggests, language has its roots in the gestural "building up of meaning" that was present in the ancestor we shared with the great apes, and that we continue to practice to this day.