Shaping Primate Evolution is an edited collection of papers about how biological form is described in primate biology, and the consequences of form for function and behavior. The contributors are highly regarded internationally recognized scholars in the field of quantitative primate evolutionary morphology. Each chapter elaborates upon the analysis of the form-function-behavior triad in a unique and compelling way. This book is distinctive not only in the diversity of the topics discussed, but also in the range of levels of biological organization that are addressed from cellular morphometrics to the evolution of primate ecology. The book is dedicated to Charles E. Oxnard, whose influential pioneering work on innovative metric and analytic techniques has gone hand-in-hand with meticulous comparative functional analyses of primate anatomy. Through the marriage of theory with analytical applications, this volume will be an important reference work for all those interested in primate functional morphology.

Homosexuality is an evolutionary paradox in search for a resolution, not a medical condition in search for a cure. Homosexual behavior is common among social animals, and mainly expressed within the context of a bisexual sexual orientation. Exclusive homosexuality is less common, but not unique to humans. Poiani and Dixson invite the reader to embark on a journey through the evolutionary, biological, psychological and sociological aspects of homosexuality, seeking an understanding of both the proximate and evolutionary causes of homosexual behavior and orientation in humans, other mammals and birds. The authors also provide a synthesis of what we know about homosexuality into a biosocial model that links recent advances in reproductive skew theory and various selection mechanisms to produce a comprehensive framework that will be useful for anyone teaching or planning future research in this field.

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.

This volume is a collection of fourteen essays by leading philosophers on issues concerning the nature, existence, and our knowledge of animal minds. The nature of animal minds has been a topic of interest to philosophers since the origins of philosophy, and recent years have seen significant philosophical engagement with the subject. However, there is no volume that represents the current state of play in this important and growing field. The purpose of this volume is to highlight the state of the debate. The issues which are covered include whether and to what degree animals think in a language or in iconic structures, possess concepts, are conscious, self-aware, metacognize, attribute states of mind to others, and have emotions, as well as issues pertaining to our knowledge of and the scientific standards for attributing mental states to animals.

Animal behaviour, as a discipline, has undergone several key transitions over the last 25 years, growing in both depth and breadth. Key advances have been made in behavioural ecology and socio-biology, in the development of studies integrating proximate and ultimate causation, in the integration of laboratory and field work, and in advances in theoretical work in areas such as sexual selection, foraging and life-history traits. Thus it is appropriate to relate the individual stories of those who have had significant impacts on the field as we know it today. Leaders in Animal Behaviour: The Second Generation is a collection of autobiographies from 21 individuals that have been peer selected, and have provided unique and important contributions to the field in the past 25 years.

How does behaviour develop in humans and animals? What are the causal mechanisms governing this behaviour? These important questions are addressed in this book, first published in 1994. All the significant conceptual and empirical advances in this study of behavioural development are discussed in this volume by a wide range of scientists from different disciplines. A special feature of the approach taken here is that learning, as studied by experimental psychologists, is considered to be one process contributing to the development of the individual from conception to death. The development of the brain is also discussed in relation to behavioural processes. The book is dedicated to Jaap Kruijit, whose pioneering approach to the study of causal mechanisms of behavioural development has inspired many workers in this field. It will be an invaluable resource for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in animal behaviour, psychology, and neuroscience.

Originally published in 1986, this book is concerned with the ways in which seabirds function as predators in the marine environment; in particular about how they find and catch food and how much of it they consume. It reviews both the feeding ecology of seabirds (including adaptations for flight and diving) and also most of the leading field studies (in polar, temperate and tropical regions) that have quantitatively examined the interactions of seabird communities with their prey.

Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen laid the foundations for the scientific study of animal behaviour with his work on causation, development, function and evolution. In this book, an international cast of leading animal biologists reflect on the enduring significance of Tinbergen's groundbreaking proposals for modern behavioural biology. It includes a reprint of Tinbergen's original article on the famous 'four whys' and a contemporary introduction, after which each of the four questions are discussed in the light of contemporary evidence. There is also a discussion of the wider significance of recent trends in evolutionary psychology and neuroecology to integrate the 'four whys'. With a foreword by one of Tinbergen's most prominent pupils, Aubrey Manning, this wide-ranging book demonstrates that Tinbergen's views on animal behaviour are crucial for modern behavioural biology. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers in animal behaviour, behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology.

Socially maintained behavioural traditions in non-human species hold great interest for biologists, anthropologists and psychologists. This book treats traditions in non-human species as biological phenomena that are amenable to the comparative methods of inquiry used in contemporary biology. Chapters in the first section define behavioural traditions, and indicate how they can arise in non-human species, how widespread they may be, how they may be recognized and how we can study them. The second part summarizes cutting-edge research programmes seeking to identify traditions in diverse taxa in contributions from leading researchers in this area. The book ends with a comparison and evaluation of the alternative theoretical formulations and their applications presented in the book, and lays out recommendations for future research building on the most promising evidence and lines of thinking. The Biology of Traditions will be essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of anthropology, biology and psychology.

Language is just one particularly highly developed form of primate communication. Recent years have seen increased attention to other forms: studies of animals in the wild, efforts to teach sign language to apes. This volume reflects perspectives from a variety of disciplines on the nature and function of primate signalling systems. Monkeys and apes, like people, live in a world in which they are constantly receiving and transmitting information. How can we interpret the ways in which they process it without imposing our own language-based categorizations? The problem is partly scientific, partly conceptual: that is, partly concerned with what language is. The authors' findings and insights will be of interest to a broad group of primatologists, linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers.

A large part of the effort of the food industry is spent in attempting to understand the limitations of the type of food that animals can eat. An understanding of the factors that influence feeding behavior can then be used to produce foodstuffs that are more attractive to the animals in question, whether they be humans, cattle, dogs, or cats. This book examines both the texture of food and the adaptations of various animals (including fish, mammals, primates, and humans) to the type of food they commonly eat. Zoologists, material scientists, and food scientists are assembled to present for the first time an integrated overview of feeding by vertebrates. The mechanical properties of various foods are considered in conjunction with the mechanics of eating them and more subjective behavioral parameters such as acceptability and palatability. The book consequently will be of interest to food scientists, zoologists, and animal behavioralists.

The forces of natural selection have been a primary driver in the evolution of adaptive animal behaviours. On the one hand animals must evade predation in order to survive and pass on their genes; on other hand, and for the same underlying reasons, animals must also be capable of successfully capturing prey. This situation has led to an evolutionary arms race in which predator and prey are locked in the battle to survive. A common strategy in each situation is to enhance the speed of response, resulting in the evolution of neural, muscular and biomechanical designs that produce supremely fast and eye-catching behavioral responses. The aim of this book is to illuminate the design principles of escape and predatory behaviours using a series of case histories from different animal groups and to emphasize the convergent evolution of neural circuitry that optimizes the chances of survival. Using these case histories the authors describe sensory mechanisms that aid prey and predator detection, central neural circuit designs that increase speed of response and neuromuscular and biomechanical properties that aid the performance of escape and predatory movements.

From ants to whales, the lives of animals are filled with challenges that demand minute-by-minute decisions: to fight or flee, dominate or obey, take-off, share, eat, spit out or court. Learning develops adaptive tuning to a changeable environment, while intelligence helps animals use their learned experiences in new situations. Using examples from field to laboratory, Animal Intelligence pools resources from ethology, behavioural ecology and comparative psychology to help the reader enter the world of wild intelligence through the analysis of adventures, of ideas and methods, rather than through theoretic modelling. It reminds us that there is a world of intellectual biodiversity out there, providing a multi-faceted panorama of animal intelligence. Written in an accessible and charming style, and with undergraduate and graduate students in mind, this book should be read by anyone with an interest in the world of animal behaviour.

Research on the evolution of higher intelligence rarely combines data from fields as diverse as paleontology and psychology. In this volume we seek to do just that, synthesizing the approaches of hominoid cognition, psychology, language studies, ecology, evolution, paleoecology and systematics toward an understanding of great ape intelligence. Leading scholars from all these fields have been asked to evaluate the manner in which each of their topics of research inform our understanding of the evolution of intelligence in great apes and humans. The ideas thus assembled represent a comprehensive survey of the various causes and consequences of cognitive evolution in great apes. The Evolution of Thought will therefore be an essential reference for graduate students and researchers in evolutionary psychology, paleoanthropology and primatology.

Cooperative breeding refers to a social system in which individuals other than the parents provide care for the offspring. Since individuals delay breeding and invest in the offspring of others, cooperative breeding poses a challenge to a Darwinian explanation of the evolution of social behaviour. The contributors to this book explore the evolutionary, ecological, behavioural and physiological basis of cooperative breeding in mammals. The book contains a collection of chapters by the leading researchers in the field, and it is dedicated exclusively to the study of mammalian cooperative breeding. It will appeal to zoologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and to those interested in animal behaviour.

This book details the results of the authors' research using laboratory animals to investigate individual choice theory in economics-consumer-demand and labour supply behaviour and choice under uncertainty. The use of laboratory animals provides the opportunity to conduct controlled experiments involving precise and demanding tests of economic theory with rewards and punishments of real consequence. Economic models are compared to psychological and biological choice models along with the results of experiments testing between these competing explanations. Results of animal experiments are used to address questions of social policy importance.

Wolves excitedly greet each other as members of the pack come together; a bumble bee uses its long tongue to reach the nectar at the base of a foxglove flower; a mongoose swiftly and deftly bites its prey to death; young cheetahs rest quietly together, very close to sleep. Now in full colour, this revised and updated edition of Manning and Dawkins' classic text provides a beautifully written introduction to the fundamentals of animal behaviour. Tinbergen's four questions of causation, evolution, development and function form the fundamental framework of the text, illustrated with fascinating examples of complex behavioural mechanisms. The authors provide accounts of all levels of behaviour from the nerve cell to that of the population. The strengths of An Introduction to Animal Behaviour as a textbook include its clear explanations and concise, readable text and the enthusiasm of the authors for their subject.

We live in a world in which inconsistency is the rule rather than the exception and this is particularly true with regard to rewards and frustrations. In some cases, rewards and frustrative nonrewards appear to occur randomly for what seems to be the same behavior; in others a sequence of rewards is suddenly followed by nonrewards, or there are large rewards followed by small rewards. Sometimes we are rewarded for responding quickly, other times for responding slowly. The important common factor in these and other cases is frustration, how we learn about it and how we respond to it. Without our awareness, our long-term dispositions are shaped from infancy and early childhood by inconsistency of reward and by our reactions to discrepancy, and they are marked by changes in arousal, suppression, persistence and regression. The explanatory domain of Frustration Theory includes an area of experimental research that has evolved over some forty years. Although most of the work is with animals, it constitutes an animal model of many of the myriad human manifestations of nonreward, thwarting of purpose, and reactions to physical and emotional insult that are regarded as frustrations. This book, by the originator of the theory and the first book to be devoted solely to Frustration Theory, gives a detailed account of the theory and its ramifications and it examines the relationship between frustration symptoms and the limbic system that is thought to be the region of the brain responsible for generating these symptoms.

As seen on ITV's This Morning 'You really can learn to talk to your pet' - Daily Mail We all want what's best for our pets, but what if we simply don't understand what that is? With this easy introductory guide to animal communication, you can leave out the guesswork and open yourself to a deeper, richer relationship with your pet. In this book, you will: * Learn exactly what animal communication is, how it differs from being a pet psychic and the different types of ways you can psychically communicate with your pet, including Beth's unique PACT method * Receive important messages from your pet, learn to communicate with other people's pets, as well as read messages via photographs * Understand how to solve behavioural issues in your pet and help them with their wellbeing * Be able to learn how to use animal communication to help cope with the loss of a beloved pet as well as learn how to use your new skills to locate a missing animal. Your pet is part of your family, they know what you are feeling, and now you can really understand what they are feeling too.

Although commonly believed that males are more promiscuous than females, new research has revealed that female infidelity is a common occurrence throughout the animal kingdom. Female Infidelity and Paternal Uncertainty is the first book to address how males deal with the consequences of female infidelity and the strategies they have evolved to try to avoid the possibility of raising an offspring they unknowingly did not sire. Each chapter deals with a specific evolved strategy developed to aid males in either limiting opportunities for their mate to be unfaithful or to 'correct' the by-products of infidelity should it occur. With sections including mate guarding, intra-vaginal tactics and paternity assessment, this book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in behavioral biology, evolutionary psychology, human sexuality, anthropology, sociology, reproductive health and medicine.

Published in 2006, Chemical Ecology of Vertebrates was the first book to focus exclusively on the chemically-mediated interactions between vertebrates including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, and other animals and plants. Reviewing research in three core areas - pheromones (where the interactions are between members of the same species), interspecific interactions involving allomones (where the sender benefits) and kairomones (where the receiver benefits), it pulls together information from widely scattered technical literature in many different disciplines into a coherent whole. Chapters on the environment, properties of odour signals, and production and release of chemosignals set the stage for discussion of more complex behavioural topics. While the main focus is ecological, dealing with behaviour and interactions in the field, it also covers chemoreception, orientation and navigation, the development of behaviour and the practical applications of chemosignals.

How do animals produce and process sounds for communication? How do their brains encode the large amounts of sensory information so rapidly and how do they use this to cope with their environment? These questions not only concern the evolution of sound communication systems but also aim to understand how arousal, motivation, emotion and behavioral contexts are vocally expressed and how important sound attributes are recognized and perceived. This book highlights auditory communication in several species from four perspectives: actual sound communication, audio-vocal adaptations, adaptations of sound processing and representation in higher auditory brain centers, and emotional and cognitive adaptations in signaling and processing. Broad in scope and geared towards graduate students and researchers within the fields of auditory communication and cognition, this book will appeal to auditory neurobiologists, speech, hearing and communication scientists and engineers, students of animal behavior and neuroethologists.

This innovative book challenges the perceived view, based largely on long observation of artificially-fed chimpanzees in Gombe and Mahale National Parks, Tanzania, of the typical social behaviour of chimpanzees as aggressive, dominance seeking, and fiercely territorial. In polar opposition, all reports from naturalistic (non-feeding) field studies are of non-aggressive chimpanzees living peacefully in non-hierarchical groups, on home ranges open to all. These reports have been ignored and downgraded by most of the scientific community. By utilising the data from these studies the author is able to construct a model of an egalitarian form of social organisation, based on a fluid role relationship of mutual dependence between many charismatic chimpanzees of both sexes and other more dependent members. This highly and necessarily positive mutual dependence system is characteristic of both (undisturbed) chimpanzees and (undisturbed) humans who live by the 'immediate-return' foraging system.

Migration is a key process in the population dynamics of many insects, including some of the most damaging pests. Multidisciplinary research into the importance of migration, in recent decades, has produced many new insights. This book reviews current understanding of the ecological, behavioural, physiological and genetic bases of insect migration. The first part describes migration systems in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and America, with an emphasis on the role of regional weather and climate. The second part considers insects adaptation to migration; it covers: aerodynamics and energetics; the integration of migration in insect life cycles; environmental and genetic regulation of migratory potential; and the evolutionary implications of habitat heterogeneity and variability. The book then addresses the application of this knowledge to operational pest forecasting.

Kin recognition, or the ability to recognize one's genetic relations, is universal throughout the animal kingdom, from amebas to humans. This trait benefits the organism by helping to insure the survival of a specific gene group, and it is also an important factor in mate choice. Indeed, kin recognition is one of the fastest growing and most exciting areas of behavior. The study of kin recognition requires a multidisciplinary approach, and Dr. Hepper has brought together leading researchers from zoology, biology, psychology, and sociology to create a thought-provoking and critical analysis of our current knowledge of the phenomenon, with particular emphasis on the underlying processes involved and their significance for the evolution of social behavior. Together they attempt to answer the questions of how individuals recognize other individuals as kin, nonkin, or different classes of kin and why they respond differently to kin and nonkin.