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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Zoology & animal sciences > Animal behaviour
Birds migrating across the Himalayan region fly over the highest peaks in the world, facing immense physiological and climatic challenges. The authors show the different strategies used by birds to cope with these challenges. Many wetland avian species are seen in the high-altitude lakes of the Himalayas and the adjoining Tibetan Plateau, such as Bar-Headed Geese. Ringing programmes have generated information about origins and destinations, and this book is the first to present information on the bird's exact migratory paths. Capitalising on knowledge generated through satellite telemetry, the authors describe the migratory routes of a multitude of birds flying over or skirting the Himalayas. The myriad of threats to migratory birds and the wetland system in the Central Asian Flyway are discussed, with ways to mitigate them. This volume will inform and persuade policy-makers and conservation practitioners to take appropriate measures for the long-term survival of this unique migration.
andbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training, Volume Two: Etiology
and Assessment of Behavior Problems is a definitive handbook for
dog trainers, behaviorists, breeders, veterinarians, and others who
have a serious interest in dog behavior and training. Readers will
benefit from the author's twenty-five years of study and experience
with dogs as a behavioral consultant and trainer. Volume 2 of Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training
explores the collective causes underlying the development of serous
adjustment problems in dogs. Coupled with Volume 1: Adaptation and
Learning, Volume 2 provides a comprehensive theoretical and
practical framework for understanding the development and treatment
of behavior problems. This volume is an authoritive and thoroughly referenced text that is written in a highly readable and enjoyable style. There are no other applied dog behavior texts of comparable quality and thoroughness available.
Animal science is bizarre and wonderful. At the extreme end of zoology, psychologists are designing personality tests for dogs and logic problems for pigeons. They're giving fish spatial reasoning problems and asking cockatoos to keep a beat. Now, through dozens of interactive puzzles, IQ tests and quizzes, Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? lets you test yourself against the best nature has to offer. So: are you more than a match for a marmoset? Or a bit of a birdbrain? Based on real, cutting-edge science and debunking common myths about animals, Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? will make you question your assumptions about our place in the animal kingdom - and, finally, explain the real difference between dog-people and cat-people.
Perspectives on Animal Behavior introduces biologists and psychologists to the scientific reasoning and methodology in the field while also addressing development and mechanisms. Rather than just focusing on evolutionary behavior, the book presents a variety of different perspectives including genetics, neurological, learning, and behavioral ecology. The third edition walks them through experimentation and data analysis, which are critical in the field. It includes classical studies that form the foundation of this field but concentrates on more current work in order to present the thinking and experiments. Biologists and psychologists will then gain a modern understanding of animal behavior.
How does behaviour affect biological invasions? Can it explain why some animals are such successful invaders? With contributions from experts in the field, and covering a broad range of animals, this book examines the role of behaviour in biological invasions from the point of view of both invaders and native species. The chapters cover theoretical aspects, particularly relevant behaviours and well-documented case studies, showing that behaviour is critical to the success, and ecological and socio-economic impact, of invasive species. Its insights suggest methods to prevent and mitigate those impacts, and offer unique opportunities to understand the adaptive role of behaviour. Offering a comprehensive overview of current understanding on the subject, the book is intended for biological invasion researchers and behavioural ecologists, as well as ecologists and evolutionary biologists interested in how organisms deal with anthropogenic environmental changes such as climate change and habitat loss.
The first edition of Frans de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" was acclaimed not only by primatologists for its scientific achievement but also by politicians, business leaders, and social psychologists for its remarkable insights into the most basic human needs and behaviors. Twenty-five years later, this book is considered a classic. Featuring a new preface that includes recent insights from the author, this anniversary edition is a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account of rivalries and coalitions--actions governed by intelligence rather than instinct. As we watch the chimpanzees of Arnhem behave in ways we recognize from Machiavelli (and from the nightly news), de Waal reminds us again that the roots of politics are older than humanity.
Originally published in 1915, this book was written by the renowned British geneticist Reginald Crundall Punnett (1875-1967). Intended to appeal to a broad range of readers, the text presents a concise discussion of mimicry in butterflies and the role of mimicry in the evolutionary process. Illustrative figures and notes are included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in butterflies, the development of evolutionary theory and the history of science.
This book reviews current knowledge on the importance of sleep for brain function, from molecular mechanisms to behavioral output, with special emphasis on the question of how sleep and sleep loss ultimately affect cognition and mood. It provides an extensive overview of the latest insights in the role of sleep in regulating gene expression, synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis and how that in turn is linked to learning and memory processes. In addition, readers will learn about the potential clinical implications of insufficient sleep and discover how chronically restricted or disrupted sleep may contribute to age-related cognitive decline and the development of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. The book consists of 19 chapters, written by experts in basic sleep research and sleep medicine, which together cover a wide range of topics on the importance of sleep and consequences of sleep disruption. This book will be of interest to students, researchers and clinicians with a general interest in brain function or a specific interest in sleep.
This volume examines fish sounds that have a proven signal function, as well as sounds assumed to have evolved for communication purposes. It provides an overview of the mechanisms, evolution and neurobiology behind sound production in fishes, and discusses the role of fish sounds in behavior with a special focus on choice of mate, sex-specific and age-specific signaling. Furthermore, it highlights the ontogenetic development of sound communication and ecoacoustical conditions in fish habitats and the influence of hormones on vocal production and sound detection. Sound Communication in Fishes offers a must-have compendium for lecturers, researchers and students working in the fields of animal communication, fish biology, neurobiology and animal behavior.
This volume explains the key ideas, questions and methods involved in studying the hidden world of vibrational communication in animals. The authors dispel the notion that this form of communication is difficult to study and show how vibrational signaling is a key to social interactions in species that live in contact with a substrate, whether it be a grassy lawn, a rippling stream or a tropical forest canopy. This ancient and widespread form of social exchange is also remarkably understudied. A frontier in animal behavior, it offers unparalleled opportunities for discovery and for addressing general questions in communication and social evolution. In addition to reviews of advances made in the study of several animal taxa, this volume also explores topics such as vibrational communication networks, the interaction of acoustic and vibrational communication, the history of the field, the evolution of signal production and reception and establishing a common vocabulary.
This book develops and tests an ecological and evolutionary theory of the causes of human values—the core beliefs that guide people’s cognition and behavior—and their variation across time and space around the world. We call this theory the parasite-stress theory of values or the parasite-stress theory of sociality. The evidence we present in our book indicates that both a wide span of human affairs and major aspects of human cultural diversity can be understood in light of variable parasite (infectious disease) stress and the range of value systems evoked by variable parasite stress. The same evidence supports the hypothesis that people have psychological adaptations that function to adopt values dependent upon local infectious-disease adversity. The authors have identified key variables, variation in infectious disease adversity and in the core values it evokes, for understanding these topics and in novel and encompassing ways. Although the human species is the focus in the book, evidence presented in the book shows that the parasite-stress theory of sociality informs other topics in ecology and evolutionary biology such as variable family organization and speciation processes and biological diversity in general in non-human animals.
Pain is the most common reason people seek medical help. The treatment of chronic pain is a major unmet clinical need and its impact on health, well-being, society and the economy is immense. Pain is an integrative, whole-systems (patho)physiological phenomenon and behavioural neuroscience plays a key role in advancing our understanding of pain. This volume brings together a series of authoritative chapters written by leading experts in preclinical and clinical aspects of pain neurobiology. Behavioural approaches to the study of persistent or chronic pain in animal models or humans are at the core of the volume, but the anatomical, physiological, neurochemical and molecular mechanisms that underpin behavioural alterations are also emphasized. ​
The primary purpose of this book and its companion volume The Neuropharmacology of Nicotine Dependence is to explore the ways in which recent studies on nicotine and its role in tobacco addiction have opened our eyes to the psychopharmacological properties of this unique and fascinating drug. While the present volume considers the molecular and genetic factors which influence behavioral responses to nicotine and how these may impact on the role of nicotine in tobacco dependence, the book The Neuropharmacology of Nicotine Dependence focuses on the complex neural and psychological mechanisms that mediate nicotine dependence in experimental animal models and their relationship to tobacco addiction in humans. These volumes will provide readers with a contemporary overview of current research on nicotine psychopharmacology and its role in tobacco dependence from leaders in this field of research and will hopefully prove valuable to those who are developing their own research programmes in this important topic.
This work addresses the gap in the current collective action literature exposed by the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) landscape by bringing together qualitative and quantitative studies from computational and social sciences. The book offers a rigorous and systematic investigation of both methodological and theoretical underpinnings and, thus, collectively promotes a symbiotic and synergistic advancement of the multiple interconnected disciplines in studying online collective actions. More specifically, the book is intended to illuminate several fundamental and powerful yet theoretically undeveloped and largely unexplored aspects of collective action in the participatory media (e.g., social media). Through in-depth exploration of relevant concepts, theories, methodologies, applications, and case studies, the reader will gain an advanced understanding of collective action with the advent of the new generation of ICTs enabled by social media and the Internet. The developed theories will be valuable and comprehensive references for those interested in examining the role of ICTs not only in collective action but also in decision and policy making, understanding the dynamics of interaction, collaboration, cooperation, communication, as well as information flow and propagation, and social network research for years to come. Further, the book also serves as an extensive repository of data sets and tools that can be used by researchers leading to a deeper and more fundamental understanding of the dynamics of the crowd in online collective actions.
This volume gathers distinguished researchers on travel behavior from a variety of disciplines, to offer state-of-the-art research and analysis encompassing environmental, traffic and transport psychology; transport planning and engineering; transport geography; transport economics; consumer services research; environmental sociology and well-being research. The underlying dilemma is that neither contemporary transportation technology nor contemporary travel behaviors are sustainable. The path toward sustainability is complex, because the consequences of changing technology and attempts to change travel preferences can be extreme both in economic and in social terms. The Handbook of Sustainable Travel discusses transportation systems from environmental, social and economic perspectives, to provide insights into the underlying mechanisms, and to envisage potential strategies towards more sustainable travel. Part I offers an introduction to the subject, with chapters review historical and future trends in travel, the role of travel for a good society, and the satisfaction of travelers with various features of travel options. Part II proceeds from the fact that the car is the backbone of today's transportation system, and that a break with automobiles is likely to be necessary in the future. Contributors review the development of private car use, explore economic and psychological reasons why the car has become the primary mode of transport and discuss how this can be changed in the future. Part III addresses the social sustainability of travel, providing insights into the social costs and benefits of leisure, business and health travel, and taking into account the social costs or benefits of measures whose goals are primarily environmental. The authors provide the necessary background to judge whether proposed transport policies are also sustainable from a social perspective. Part IV highlights future alternatives to physical travel and surveys ecologically sustainable travel modes such as public transport and non-motorized modes of transportation.
How did social communication evolve in primates? In this volume, primatologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers of science systematically analyze how their specific disciplines demarcate the research questions and methodologies involved in the study of the evolutionary origins of social communication in primates in general and in humans in particular. In the first part of the book, historians and philosophers of science address how the epistemological frameworks associated with primate communication and language evolution studies have changed over time and how these conceptual changes affect our current studies on the subject matter. In the second part, scholars provide cutting-edge insights into the various means through which primates communicate socially in both natural and experimental settings. They examine the behavioral building blocks by which primates communicate and they analyze what the cognitive requirements are for displaying communicative acts. Chapters highlight cross-fostering and language experiments with primates, primate mother-infant communication, the display of emotions and expressions, manual gestures and vocal signals, joint attention, intentionality and theory of mind. The primary focus of the third part is on how these various types of communicative behavior possibly evolved and how they can be understood as evolutionary precursors to human language. Leading scholars analyze how both manual and vocal gestures gave way to mimetic and imitational protolanguage and how the latter possibly transitioned into human language. In the final part, we turn to the hominin lineage, and anthropologists, archeologists and linguists investigate what the necessary neurocognitive, anatomical and behavioral features are in order for human language to evolve and how language differs from other forms of primate communication.
The primary purpose of this book and its companion volume The Behavioral Genetics of Nicotine and Tobacco is to explore the ways in which recent studies on nicotine and its role in tobacco addiction have opened our eyes to the psychopharmacological properties of this unique and fascinating drug. While The Behavioral Genetics of Nicotine and Tobacco considers the molecular and genetic factors which influence behavioral responses to nicotine and how these may impact on the role of nicotine in tobacco dependence, the present book focuses on the complex neural and psychological mechanisms that mediate nicotine dependence in experimental animal models and their relationship to tobacco addiction in humans. These volumes will provide readers a contemporary overview of current research on nicotine psychopharmacology and its role in tobacco dependence from leaders in this field of researchand will hopefully prove valuable to those who are developing their own research programmes in this important topic.
Every coordination within or between animals depends on communication processes. Although the signaling molecules, vocal and tactile signs, gestures and its combinations differ throughout all species according their evolutionary origins and variety of adaptation processes, certain levels of biocommunication can be found in all animal species:Â (a) Abiotic environmental indices such as temperature, light, water, etc. that affect the local ecosphere of an organism and are sensed, interpreted. (b) Trans-specific communication with non-related organisms. (c) Species-specific communication between same or related species. (d) Intraorganismic communication, i.e., sign-mediated coordination within the body of the organism. This book gives an overview of the manifold levels of animal communication exemplified by a variety of species and thereby broadens the understanding of these organisms.
Cutting edge technologies can propel a simple finding in basic science to a concept that can be of immense value to the society. While applying novel techniques to unravel the mysteries of biological processes, an offshoot of applied branch emerged. This field, which is now widely referred to as Translational Research utilizes basic science findings and translates these findings into innovative concepts for the benefit of mankind. This branch of science has evolved into a multidisciplinary juggernaut encompassing all known fields of science as varied as biomedicine, environment, law, economics, sociology, etc. With the ever increasing interest in this branch and the dreams and aspirations that this field can bring, basic science researchers are now taking a bold step into this new realm, merging different fields of knowledge to come up with novel inventions. This book "Translational research in environmental and occupational stress" provides and insight into the research that led to discoveries, inventions and development of novel technologies which will have a tremendous impact on the future of mankind.
This book explores both the possibilities and limits of arguments from human nature in the context of human rights. Can the concept of human nature provide a basis for understanding fundamental rights? Is it plausible to justify the claim to universal validity of human rights by reference to human nature? Or does the idea of human rights in its modern, post-1945 manifestation go, in essence, beyond human nature? The essays in this volume introduce naturalistic positions and their concomitant critiques. They address the role that human nature both actually does and potentially may play in forming a foundation for and acting as an exemplification of fundamental rights. Beyond that, they give attention to the challenges caused by Life Sciences. Human nature itself is subject to transformation and transgression in an unprecedented manner. The essays reflect on issues such as reproduction, species manipulation, corporeal autonomy and enhancement. Contributors are jurists, philosophers and political scientists from Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Poland and Japan.
This book highlights the state of the field in the new, provocative line of research into the cognition and behavior of the domestic dog. Eleven chapters from leading researchers describe innovative methods from comparative psychology, ethology and behavioral biology, which are combined to create a more comprehensive picture of the behavior of Canis familiaris than ever before. Each of the book’s three parts highlights one of the perspectives relevant to providing a full understanding of the dog. Part I covers the perceptual abilities of dogs and the effect of interbreeding. Part II includes observational and experimental results from studies of social cognition – such as learning and social referencing – and physical cognition in canids, while Part III summarizes the work in the field to date, reviewing various conceptual and methodological approaches and testing anthropomorphisms with regard to dogs. The final chapter discusses the practical application of behavioral and cognitive results to promote animal welfare. This volume reflects a modern shift in science toward considering and studying domestic dogs for their own sake, not only insofar as they reflect back on human beings.
Originally published in 1942, this book is an introduction to the study of bird psychology. Armstrong covers a wide variety of subjects relating to 'ceremonials' and other rituals conducted by various species of birds, including social hierarchy, courtship, song and arena displays. The text is illustrated with a variety of photographs illustrating some of the practices described. This book will be valuable to anyone with an interest in the conduct and communication of birds.
Originally published in 1929, this book contains the text of three lectures by George Coghill on the subject of the anatomical basis for typical behavioural development in animals. Coghill takes salamanders as his particular case study to connect the growth of the nervous system in an organism with its observable behaviour. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in animal behaviour and the physiological basis for behaviour.
Originally published in 1951 as part of the Cambridge Library of Modern Science, this book discusses the life cycles of various parasitic animals, as distinct from parasitic bacteria and plants. Key biological points are illustrated with references to parasitic animals that attack either humans or domestic animals for the purposes of clarity, and the effect of the host-parasite relationship on both parties is also examined. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of science and parasitology.
Unchecked aggression and violence take a significant toll on society. Even if we manage to avoid being the direct victim of a violent act, the effects of aggression and violence reach us all: We hear about the mauling of a woman by an aggressive dog, our children are bullied at school, or we deal with impulsive violence while commuting to work or attending a sporting event. Reflecting psychology in general, the dominant roles of learning and environmental influences - both social and nonsocial - have traditionally been prominent in discussions of the etiology of human aggression. Biological factors have not been considered sufficiently important to investigate in the search for ways of dealing with human aggression or violence. With recent advances in pharmacology and genetic manipulation techniques, however, new interest has developed in the biological mechanisms of both non-human and human aggression. Although aggression is certainly a complex social behavior with multiple causes, molecular biological factors should not be overlooked, as they may well lead to interventions that prevent excess aggressive behaviors. The primary goal of this book is to summarize and synthesize recent advances in the biological study of aggression. As most aggressive encounters among human and non-human animals represent a male proclivity, the research in this book describes and discusses studies using the most appropriate murine model: testosterone-dependent offensive inter-male aggression, which is typically measured in resident-intruder or isolation-induced aggression tests. The research also emphasizes various molecules that have been linked to aggression tests. The research also emphasizes various molecules that have been linked to aggression by the latest gene-targeting and pharmacological techniques. Although the evidence continues to point to androgens and serotonin (5-HT) as major hormonal and neurotransmitter factors in aggressive behavior, recent work with GABA, dopamine, vasopressin, and other factors, such as nitric oxide, has revealed significant interactions with the neural circuitry underlying aggression. This book is organized according to levels of analysis. The first section examines the genetic contributions to aggression in species ranging from crustaceans to humans. The section summarizes the involvement of various neurotransmitters and neuromodulators in aggressive behavior. The third section summarizes the influence of hormones on aggression, primarily in humans. All chapters emphasize future directions for research on aggression and reveal important domains that have received comparatively less attention in this literature. Considered together, these chapters provide up-to-date coverage of the biology of aggression by some of the leading authorities currently working in this field. Biology of Aggression will direct future research to continue the recent advances in the pharmacological and genetic approaches to understanding aggression and violence. It promises to be a valuable resource for professional and student researchers in neuroscience, psychiatry, cognitive and developmental psychology, behavioral biology, and veterinary medicine. |
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