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Nov 21

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Laughing Eyes

In his song Snowin’ on Raton, Townes Van Zandt sings  ”shall I cast my dreams upon your love babe / and lie beneath the laughter of your eyes.”  Part of what makes Townes an amazing musician is that his lyrics are surprising – the words aren’t what you’re expecting.  ”The laughter of your eyes” is a good example of this: we associate laughter with the mouth, or the voice, or even the diaphragm, rather than the eyes.  However, Townes is right on here.  I doubt that he read Paul Ekman’s 1978 manual on the Facial Action Coding System, but these lyrics highlight an interesting human behavior Read more

Nov 17

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Singing Mice

When you think of animals that sing, birds will certainly come to mind. Whales might, too. But mice? Or fish?  It turns out mice and fish do sing, although “vocalizations” might be a more technically correct way of describing the sounds they make.  Bret Pasch, a graduate student at the University of Florida, says there are plenty of mouse species that sing. “The more we search, the more we find that rodents and other small mammals produce vocalizations,” he says.

Read the full NPR article and see videos here

Nov 14

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Girl Fight

This month’s issue of Behavioral Ecology has a special section on intrasexual selection in females.  Female-female competition is indeed a hot topic, and a fascinating one!  But we might ask why it took so long, given that we’ve been studying male-male competition for so long.  Is it scientifically shocking that females compete for the best mates too, or might this be an example of gender bias in how we study animal behavior?

Nov 9

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Assuming Motivation

“Look at these cute dogs cuddling together.  They must really love each other!”

We often make assumptions about behavior when we shouldn’t.  Humans love to give other animals human qualities (i.e., anthropomorphism).  This is fine when we’re just being silly, but we also have a tendency to do this without realizing what we are doing. Read more

Nov 8

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Process or Mechanism?

One often hears the terms “mechanism” and “process” used interchangeably.  But really, what do they mean, what’s the difference, and does it really matter?  Giving these terms strict definitions is key to nailing down the conceptual framework of your research. Read more

Nov 8

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Life History?

Poor “Life History.”  Unfortunately, this is one of the most commonly misused terms in biology.   There is really no such thing as a “life history.”  That term is short-hand and probably ought to be avoided. Read more

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