Monkeys, too, notice if others earn more than themselves, and don't like it one bit.

A few years ago, we re-enacted the wealthy CEO scenario with tufted capuchin monkeys at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, in Atlanta. Some monkeys played fat cat, while others played lowly clerk. Unfortunately, we...

A few weeks ago, millions of Chinese television viewers watched in disbelief how a magician's goldfish swam in tight formation. Goldfish are not known for compact schools, but here they moved like fighter planes in perfect synchrony seemingly guided by the magician's hands. The trick was done in...

Oren Harman's The Price of Altruism (Norton, 2010) is about the "puzzle," "riddle," or "mystery" of altruism. In reviewing it for the NYT, it struck me that each and every personality featured in the book -- from Darwin to Kropotkin, and from Trivers to Wilson, not to mention...

I am no Punxsutawney Phil, and don't care much for the men in high hats who awkwardly kept my fellow groundhog aloft at a safe distance from their coats, but I did see my shadow today and, I hate to tell you, it is human!

We, animals, are often...

Today's column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times entitled "Our Basic Human Pleasures: Food, Sex and Giving" struck a chord as he offered examples of how we feel good when we do good. Obviously, this relates to the massive response to the Haiti earthquake.

Let me...

Time has just chosen its "Man of the Year," whose intelligence was immediately questioned, so why not review some genuine, proven Einsteins, even if they are animals?

Animals seem to be getting smarter all the time. Since 2000, discovery after discovery has put a dent in human uniqueness...

Timeline:

• 16 Feb 2009: In Stamford, CT, a 200-pound pet chimpanzee, named Travis, attacks Charla Nash, who loses her eyelids, nose, lips, and hands. Doctors later remove her eyes. Travis is killed on the spot by the police.


• 11 Nov 2009: Oprah shows Charla Nash's face, or...

The discovery of fellatio in the shortnosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx) by Chinese investigators has become a bit of a web sensation, because who would have thought that animals actually enjoy sex and do their darnedest to stretch out the pleasure? For every second of penis licking by the...

Neocons favor the chimpanzee -- macho and violent -- as model of our ape ancestor. But "Ardi" seems to have had more in common with the hippie-like bonobo.

The most outrageous claim regarding "Ardi" (the recently discovered 4.4 million year old fossil of a human ancestor) came from a press...

Without God, we will live like animals!

After listening to the debate between Bill O'Reilly and Richard Dawkins, it struck me again that the resistance to evolutionary theory largely stems from the illusion that without God there can be no morality. Some believers feel threatened by evolutionary theory not...

With all the talk of empathy (or the lack thereof) in the Supreme Court, the health care industry, or society as a whole, it is good to realize that it is an ancient mammalian trait that is occasionally expressed by other animals. A twelve year old example is the...

That a candidate for the Supreme Court needs empathy, as Obama emphasized, is almost too obvious to pay attention to. Because apart from psychopaths, all humans are endowed with empathy, which is the capacity to be affected by the emotional states of others, and to become part of their situation....

The story of Travis, the chimpanzee, reminds me of a zoo where a visitor had climbed in with the polar bears, and got mauled. One bear was shot. A rather unfair ending, in my opinion.
Now there is another sad story surrounding a chimpanzee. Travis, a young adult...

David Broder in the Washington Post of September 28, 2008, writes an opinion piece entitled "McCain as the Alpha Male."

Since the term "alpha male" comes out of primatology, and I have known many males who qualify, I feel like commenting on Broder's observation

"... an imbalance in the...

When it comes to animal escapes, we often blame the enclosure or the zoo, but perhaps the culprit is human behavior. I am personally not against keeping animals at zoos, as they serve a huge educational purpose, but treating them well and with respect seems the least we could do,...

A young chimpanzee does something Japanese college students can't do -- even after extensive special training. The chimp, Ayumu, can in one brief glance of 210 msec (faster than you can blink!) memorize five numbers on a screen and then tap them in the right order even though the numbers...

Americans love Darwinism!

Unfortunately, it's the wrong kind. Known as "Social Darwinism," it presents life as a struggle in which those who make it shouldn't let themselves be dragged down by those who don't. Survival of the fittest has become a political prescription. The President again sided with this prescription...

The term alpha female originated in my field of animal behavior, but has acquired new meaning. It refers to women who are in charge, for example, by flirting and dating on their own terms. It is also used maliciously for a loud-mouthed, controlling woman who has no patience with deviating...

The politically correct primate, known for its "gay" relations, female supremacy, and pacific lifestyle has come under attack. The bonobo is a close relative of both the chimpanzee and us. A "far-flung correspondent" of The New Yorker (July 30, 2007), Ian Parker, went all the way to Africa to...