Stories by Jason G. Goldman

A fallow buck judges a rival's call to tell whether he can be trounced in a mating contest

Earlier this week I sat down with my friend Cara Santa Maria to chat on her excellent podcast, Talk Nerdy. The conversation was wide-ranging: we talked about the discovery of a new group of insects in which the females have what many are calling a “penis-like structure” (but which the researchers have labeled a gynosome), [...]

People overwhelmingly believe that having pets is overall a good thing for children. Indeed, a 2003 paper by developmental psychologist Gail F.

March was a busy month! Here’s everything I wrote last month. Here on The Thoughtful Animal: Oil Pollution is Making Gulf Dolphins Sick Studying Contagious Yawning Might Help Us Build Better Societies The Turtle with Human Eyes When Animals Act Like People in Stories, Kids Can't Learn At Conservation Magazine’s Conservation This Week blog: Move [...]

In October, two oarfish mysteriously washed up dead on beaches in Southern California. It’s unusual to find one intact oarfish carcass, so the fact that there were two within days of each other had scientists scratching their heads.

Some species adapt well to no-till fields

"Yum, these grass and plants are delicious!" Mother cavy thinks as she eats her breakfast. "I will feed some to my baby cavies too!" she says.

At first glance, most eyes look the same. There’s a small opening through which light passes. That light goes through the transparent liquid behind the lens and strikes the retina, a thin film of light-sensitive nerve cells that line the back of the eye.

We often turn to dogs and to chimpanzees to understand our species. Chimpanzees are our closest relatives (with bonobos), while centuries of selective breeding have turned dogs into a species uniquely suited to comprehend our own social cues.

For eighty-seven days in 2010, 210 million gallons of oil from wells below the Deepwater Horizon poured into the Gulf of Mexico. Researchers announced recently that as a result, Bottlenose dolphins in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay are suffering from a host of maladies, including lung disease and adrenal problems.

Imagination triggers some of the same physical mechanisms involved in actual sight

My schoolteachers took effort to separate close friends when arranging their classroom seating charts. The idea was that we’d pay more attention to our lessons if we were distracted by our buddies.

I think that hanging out in a heavily touristed area of San Francisco’s Embarcadero means that these California sea lions – one mature individual and one pup – qualify as urban wildlife.

Last weekend, a healthy juvenile male reticulated giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo was killed. His name was Marius. The reason given was that his genes were already sufficiently represented in the giraffe population across the zoos of the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums (EAZA) his brother lives in a zoo in England, for [...]

They're the only species of horse never to be domesticated, and have a fascinating history.

Just a reminder that I also write elsewhere on the internet. In particular, you can regularly find me at BBC Future and at Conservation Magazine.

“Is Griffith Park an island?” That’s the question that Miguel Ordeana, a wildlife biologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles who also does field work in Nicaragua, wanted to know.

Here’s one thing you already knew: red pandas are adorable. While they’re not domesticated and therefore are probably not suitable as pets, some people keep them as pets anyway – especially in Nepal and India – and upload their adorable hijinks to the internet for the world to see.

Taken together, visitor behavior in the petting zoo just doesn't seem to matter all that much. And if positive interactive experiences with animals can lead visitors towards adopting a better attitude towards animal welfare and wildlife conservation, then petting zoos are probably worth keeping around.

Marine mammals forge strong social bonds with other species

By Jason G. Goldman and Matt Soniak It should come as no surprise that we humans can be a bit confused when it comes to our relationship with other animals.

Another day, another stunning camera trap photo. This one is of a silverback Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), the rarest of the four gorilla subspecies, and it was taken in Nigera’s Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary.

It’s the hippo of course. Did you know that a fully grown hippo can bite a crocodile in half? Taken at the San Diego Zoo on October 11, 2013.

One of the main challenges with photographing the non-human animals at the zoo is shooting through glass. Sometimes you just can’t get an angle without any glare, but sometimes it doesn’t matter.