Stories by Felicity Muth

In shows like Lassie, I was always impressed at the amount of information a dog was able to convey to a human: `What's that, Lassie? A little girl trapped in a building that you tried to reach but then couldn't owing to the fire that caught alight to the fence surrounding it?' I never owned [...]

One question in an animal cognition is whether animals other than humans have the ability to recognise themselves. A classic way of testing this, established in 1970 by Gordon Gallup, is the `mirror test'.

What do shingleback lizards, budgerigars and Mexican grey wolves all have in common? All these animals are monogamous: they generally mate with a partner for a substantial period of time, in many cases to raise offspring together.

The largest animal behaviour conference in the UK (the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour) was held last Thursday and Friday in my hometown of St Andrews.

Zebra finches are birds which, once they've found that special someone, will tend to stick with them. They are what is called `socially monogamous', meaning they form pairs to mate and raise offspring over multiple breeding seasons, but with the occasional sneaky mating with the next door neighbour.

When we know someone is watching us, we behave differently. This `audience effect' is something I have written about previously. However, a new study has found a type of audience effect never before found outside humans.

When it comes to mating, males rarely cooperate. In most species males compete for females, through roaring, head-banging, or even eye-length comparison.

I used to work in Edinburgh's Butterfly and Insect World. While I was there, my favourite animal was not the chameleon, which changed colour when it was angry.

This is a jumping spider, and it is unusual in more ways than just its looks. 

We all act a bit differently when we know someone's watching. When your boss walks into a room, perhaps you're more likely to do a good job, (or if you're anything like me, more likely to screw up).

Have you ever wondered what makes you right- or left-handed? Well, in humans and other mammals, the brain is divided down the middle, or `lateralized'.

People are irrational. Example: You wouldn't buy a new dress, or suit, that costs $100 (`that's far too much to spend!') but you would buy one that was $300, but is now `reduced' to $150 (`but just look at how far down it's come!') Sound familiar?

As humans, we generally think that we should be somewhat choosy when picking a mate. However, we are lucky in that making the wrong choice rarely results in being eaten by said partner.

Whether animals feel emotion, and are capable of suffering, is a question the answer to which has far-reaching implications. I recently read Victoria Braithwaite's `Do Fish Feel Pain?', a question that I didn't worry about much until reading this book, but now bothers me a lot more.

The article I discuss below came out last year, but it really is a rather cool experiment, so I felt I had to share it. Bowerbirds, perhaps best known from Sir David Attenborough's documentaries, are unique in their elaborate constructions of bowers.