Hot answers tagged behaviour
10
Yawning is contagious in humans, which means that, in general, it is more likely that a person yawning after perceived (by sight, hearing, or both directions) yawning issued by another person. The frequency of infection varies throughout the day, with a peak in early morning and late evening.
A recent study conducted by Ivan Norscia and Elisabetta Palagi ...
9
Crows are omnivorous, and will eat almost anything they find or can kill.
In this case the prey looks like a Northern Flicker.
7
Among the great apes, chimpanzees and gorillas live in very hierarchical, male-dominated clans that are often in violent conflict with other clans. Bonobos, on the other hand, lead very peaceful lives, and are female-dominated, using sexual contact as a manner of communication to reduce tension within and between groups. Orangutans are largely solitary ...
6
The reason for their behavior is that exactly the fact that even though some of them do indeed get killed, most of them survive -- what you have said. The deer cross the river because that allows for the better continuation of the species rather than if they had stayed on the original side of the river. You could think of it this way: If there was a crowd ...
5
Aldridge et al. (2011) show a correlation between facial phenotypes and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in a sample of 8-12 year old boys.
They studied two groups of boys, 65 that had been diagnosed with ASD and 41 who had not. They collected 3D images of the faces and looked for similar patterns among the two groups. They found a significant association ...
5
The species of wasp you're referring to is Glyptapanteles. I'm not sure which virus it is.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14053-zombie-caterpillars-controlled-by-voodoo-wasps.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
Is it possible? Of course, you have an example! Though, there is a small caveat. Some of the offspring sacrifice themselves to induce the ...
3
For these two phenomena to create the same feelings all of the time, the physiology that engenders these feelings would have to be the same. All I can do is point out that these have been separate and distinct even in yeast and bacteria and invoke a likelihood argument.
The impulse for hunger is almost as old as living things. In bacteria, cyclic ...
2
I would suggest that the behaviour of the gazelles you are citing is perhaps over simplified. There will likely be temporal and spatial dynamics in their behaviour... Prey will probably spend more time concentrating on observation when they know there are predators around. There will also be likely peak times during which hunting occurs (in savannah systems ...
2
Although there is clearly no feasible mechanism for such a phenomenon, there is good evidence that transplant patients can believe in some sort of transference of qualities from the donor. See for example (my emphasis):
Inspector, Y. et al. (2004) Another Person's Heart: Magical and Rational Thinking in the Psychological Adaptation to Heart ...
2
This is a prototypical case of evolution by natural selection. Any trait that prevents the organism from being eaten or destroyed will probably make that organism more likely to reproduce* than similar organisms that do not have that trait**. This results in self-preservation traits becoming more prevalent in the population and eventually ubiquitous.
* Or ...
2
This seems to be a piece of pseudoscience commonly seen these days. The truth is that this effect has never been statistically observed.
From the Skeptics Stack Exchange site:
Ivan Kelly, James Rotton and Roger Culver (1996) examined over 100 studies on lunar effects and concluded that the studies have failed to show a reliable and significant ...
1
The neurological basis of behavior is still unclear, and the genetic basis of behavior is even less clear. What can be said is that genetics may predispose you to certain behaviors, but what the predisposing factors are, and how much they determine your behavior (and how much is due to environmental factors), is unclear. And this varies for different ...
1
The fungus releases toxins, but how exactly this alters behavior is unclear.
You can read more here. Pathogen manipulation of host behavior appears to have evolved a long time ago, and cordyceps is not the only pathogen that acts like this.
1
In the study by Whitfield 1990 (1) I found the information that the parasitic wasp from family Ichneumonidae have interesting symbiotic viruses called polydnaviruses. This virus stay as provirus in the wasps genome and is transmitted vertically between subsequent generations of parasitoid. It does not harm the wasp and it is transmitted to the wasps hosts ...
1
thinking and decision making under stress or pressure is significantly reduced. its sometimes called the 'fight or flight' condition.
This is a pretty well established phenomenon. Here's a great radiolab segment on stress response. Psychologist John Gottman notes how our ability to have a conversation where we can even listen to what someone else has to ...
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