We might not be able to hear them without the use of sophisticated technology, but humpback whales are loud. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to this recording: They call to one another to gather in groups and males sing their hearts out to attract females. So after decades of listening to and studying…
What happens when captive talking birds, such as parrots and cockatoos, escape and return to the wild? They start teaching their new wild bird buddies some of the words they learned while hanging out with humans, including the naughty ones. Swearing parrots are nothing new. Parrots are mimics and when kept in captivity they often learn to repeat the words they hear, even…
Magpies are an intelligent, social, self-aware species capable of reasoning, strategy, foresight, altruism, and other behaviors not previously associated with birds. They also play a mean game of hide-and-seek. Lots of animals stalk and ambush one another during play, but magpies actually play hide-and-seek the same way we do. They take turns concealing themselves, peek out from their…
Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist who studied the brain, behavior, and emotions, died this week, on April 18. Panksepp helped establish the idea that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. He also made incredibly important contributions to our understanding of emotions—our own, those of other animals, and evolutionary continuity between the two. In…
Art is hard enough to define when it is created by humans, but what about when wild animals make objects that look like art? Consider Torquigener albomaculosus, more commonly known as the White-spotted pufferfish. Found in the coastal waters of subtropical Japan, this amazing fish has the distinction of being the most accomplished underwater animal artist discovered to date. The males of this species are…
Scientists have found plenty of evidence suggesting that many animals have at least a basic understanding of death. But there are a few species who seem to have a deeper understanding. These species respond to death in ways that aren’t all that different from the ways humans respond. When a companion, mate, or offspring is lost, they often gather, touch the…
Interspecies friendship raises intriguing questions about animal communication, such as how do different species learn to read one another’s signals and become friends? After all, many examples of friendships that cross the species divide involve animals with very different behaviors that arose from adaptations to diverse habitats. Though interspecies friendship occasionally happens in the wild, it…
I use a quote from the film The Whale in my introduction to my book, and on my “About” page on this blog. The quote—and the film—call our attention to the often unrecognized animal sentience and intelligence that surrounds us. The film tells the true story of “a young, wild killer whale—an orca—nicknamed Luna, who lost contact with his…
Musician and philosopher David Rothenberg has written extensively about the relationship between humanity and nature. He is the author of Why Birds Sing, on making music with birds, which was turned into a feature-length BBC TV documentary. His following book, Thousand Mile Song, is on making music with whales. It was turned into a film for French television….
Four years ago, ethologist and animal advocate Marc Bekoff wrote an op-ed for LiveScience titled “After 2,500 Studies, It’s Time to Declare Animal Sentience Proven.” In this essay, Bekoff points out that the ample empirical evidence supporting animal sentience (over 2,500 studies at the time he was writing and many more than that now) still wasn’t stopping skeptics from continuing…