Ants have been quite successful, evolutionarily speaking. They are found on every continent, apart from Antarctica. They fill a range of ecological niches, from the tops of towering rain forest trees to…
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Articles on Animal behaviour
Displaying 161 - 180 of 191 articles
Humans have been fascinated by the colour-changing abilities of chameleons for a long time. Aristotle himself, the forefather of Western philosophy and also a keen zoologist, mentioned the lizard’s ability…
Hornets put fear into the minds of most, but there is a parasite that the hornets fear (if indeed they are capable of fear). Sphaerularia vespae is a parasitic nematode that infects the Japanese yellow…
Reintroduction programs are key initiatives for re-establishing or re-stocking animal populations, and while some are successful, many, unfortunately, are not. Endangered and critically endangered animals…
A new species of sea slug has been found to inject its sexual partners with secretions that alter their behaviour. The sea…
Everyone knows what it’s like to be uncertain – at least, humans do. But are non-human animals ever uncertain? When we feel uncertainty, instead of risking the consequences of a bad or wrong decision…
In the field of animal behaviour, there is one topic that is almost guaranteed to get your study in the popular press: showing how an animal behaves just like humans. This can be solving problems, using…
Teaching a robot to walk – even poorly – requires huge investment into computational resources. How is it that even the simplest animals are able to achieve far more sophisticated feats of manoeuvrability…
As humans, we point all the time. It’s an action we do almost without thinking: even one-year-old infants use pointing and understand what pointing means when an adult does it for them. It’s a really simple…
Shy birds stick together in flocks while their bold counterparts have more social partners, according to research from Oxford…
As humans, we experience an amazing world of colour, but what can other animals see? Some see much more than us, but how they use this vision is largely unknown. We see what we see because our eyes have…
September is the peak of Australia’s own version of “home-grown terrorism” (as memorably described to me by a distraught and bleeding school principal, valiantly attempting to protect his pupils), when…
For life to persist, it must tolerate its environment. The depth of an arctic winter is formidable, and is most notably overcome by hibernation. But some reptiles and amphibians survive by allowing their…
In our society, not many people are lucky enough to have an ideal boss who they would want to follow faithfully for the rest of their lives. Many might even find their boss selfish and arrogant or complain…
Our individual, varied personalities are among the traits often cited as those that distinguish us from the rest of the animal kingdom. However, as we, like the rest of life on Earth, are products of natural…
One of nature’s most fascinating phenomena is the collective behaviour of animals. A shoal of fish, a swarm of locusts, and a colony of ants can all act as superorganisms, where the group as a whole makes…
A new round of public consultation has begun on proposals to increase the sentencing for the owners of dogs who carry out fatal attack from seven years to life. Such moves are prompted in part by the huge…
Jumping spiders are unique in the spider world as they don’t build webs - they’re active visual predators who rarely use silk. In fact, the main use we thought jumping spiders had for silk was a safety…
In a honey bee colony, the queen bee rules while her daughter workers do nothing but work. So what happens when the queen dies? Are there worker riots, with the colony dissolving into a chaotic mess? Surprisingly…
Can superb fairy-wrens learn to respond to brood-parasitic cuckoos by simply watching other fairy-wrens react to a cuckoo? That’s the question posed in a new Biology Letters study by myself and Naomi Langmore…
Top contributors
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Associate Professor, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide
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Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of Salford
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Professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare, University of New England
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Asso. Professor in Anthropology, University College London, UCL
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Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Liverpool John Moores University
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Evolutionary Ecology, Griffith University
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Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University
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PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide
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Postdoctoral Researcher in Veterinary Science, University of Sydney
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Senior Lecturer in Zoology, Bangor University
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Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow, University of Exeter
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Lecturer in the School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University
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Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Behaviour, Welfare & Ethics, James Cook University
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Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University
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Adjunct Research Associate, Monash University
