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The Mastermind Behind Foot-flagging Frogs’ Flashy Courtship Displays: Androgen

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Animals’ mating displays are often multimodal which means that they incorporate different signaling types that include acoustic, visual, chemical, and seismic signals. Depending on environmental conditions, the males of certain species can adapt their multimodal signaling by alternating between signals. … Continue reading

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Will a Man’s Armpit Sweat Smell Change a Woman’s Speaking Quality?

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Like other animals, humans use their different sensory modalities to communicate information to one other, and the ways in which these sensory systems are used for communication can change depending on the situation. One scenario that occurs across many organisms … Continue reading

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Southern house wrens use alarm calls to alert others to danger

A variety of mammals and birds rely on alarm calls as a common defensive strategy to alert others to danger. Alarm calls vary in the information they carry about a certain threat. Calls can carry information about predator type, size, … Continue reading

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Do Fish Have a Favorite Side of Their Bodies? For Some Behaviors They Might.

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Do fish favor one side of their bodies for certain behaviors? This might be a question you’ve never considered, but it makes sense to think about. Using the example of humans, a (sometimes problematic) tendency that we exhibit even when … Continue reading

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A Leap of Faith – Jumping Spiders and their Perception of Depth

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Jumping spiders are known for their ability to leap and from one point to another, a mechanism that can assist in escape as well as predation, as jumping spiders pounce on their prey. As you might imagine, high velocity jumps … Continue reading

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The “Lit” Nightlife of the Giant Honey Bee

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Except the night owls, most humans tend to stay active during the day and rest to recharge during the night. Similarly, most animal species are adapted to be active during specific periods of the day and these activity periods make … Continue reading

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You Can’t Eat It if You Can’t See It: A Story About the Evolution of Bats

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A study by Dr. Ronald P. Hall and his colleagues focuses on how bats become specialized to eat different foods and live in different environments; it shows us how the senses are a really important part of being well adapted … Continue reading

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The Olfactory Attraction of Asparagus—Why Are the Spotted Asparagus Beetles Competing for Your Food?

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The phytophagous—plant feeding—insects interact with their host plants through various signaling information, such as smell and taste, as well as visual and tactile information. Scientists have conducted extensive research on the role of host plants’ odors on pest orientation. In … Continue reading

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What?! I Can’t Hear You! Impact of Katydid Chorus on Bat Hunting Behavior

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Animals living in natural ecosystems often live with the background noise produced by water features or insect calls, for example. This background noise can interfere with an organism’s abilities to effectively distribute their acoustic signals or perceive other acoustic signals … Continue reading

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What Sensory Ecology Can Teach Us About Society and Evolution

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Many neuroscientists have studied the development of Individual Recognition in the natural world, which is the ability of one organism to recognize another and change their behavior in response. For instance, the simplest type of individual recognition (called binary individual recognition) … Continue reading

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