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Animal Consciousness
The jail environment teaches the animals that approaching humans results in a boring and annoying experience.
In all mammals, there are two brain pathways for processing information from the eyes: an evolutionarily ancient one and a more modern one.
Humans are good visual thinkers, too, but we tend to privilege verbal thinking.
Don’t worry that your dog’s world is visually drab.
If dogs are out in coats and boots, how are the squirrels feeling?
Recent discoveries about bodily awareness have changed how scientists think about the nature of consciousness.
Many animals engage in “zoopharmacognosy” or self-medication.
8mins
Is science destined to crack the code of consciousness—and how would we even go about it?
John Templeton Foundation
Catfish taste with their whole bodies - and that’s just one way animals sense the world totally differently than us.
Imagine Flipper trained in the art of espionage.
Turning off a gene called “Myc” has a surprising effect in male fruit flies: They start courting other males.
Livestock now outweighs wild mammals and birds ten-fold.
Scuba divers often appear to be swimming through a calm and muffled universe. This couldn't be farther from the truth.
Research sheds light on social behavior of these mysterious predators.
For 40 years, scientists thought a specific gene was linked to aggression in hamsters. Removing it, however, had violent consequences.
The long-standing debate over whether dinosaurs were more like birds or lizards is drawing to a close.
We already know animals feel emotions, and that they can understand humans' emotions. But can they understand each other's emotions?
From machines to animals, there are many kinds of possible minds.
The apes taught sign language didn't understand what they were doing. They were merely "aping" their caretakers.
Research shows that octopuses are sentient, emotional creatures.
There is strong evidence that invertebrates are sentient beings.
COVID-19 and other microbes have shed light on disease spillover from animals to humans, but we can also spillback disease to wildlife.
Anesthesia causes animals and humans to lose consciousness. A study found it has a similar effect on Venus flytraps.
Scientists at the San Diego Zoo are on a mission to resurrect the extinct northern white rhino.
Awe is a powerful force, a fact that is both exciting and terrifying.
John Templeton Foundation
The human brain is only the latest chapter in the ancient story of thinking on Earth.
Many animals practice what looks like self-medication. A new report suggests that chimps tend wounds with insects, often treating each other.
Pokémon has people wandering the world to enslave wild and magical creatures so they can fight in painful blood sports. What's fun about that?
An evolutionary biologist explains why you probably won't grow a tail.