Listening to the song of the toadfish (w/Audio)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Professor Roger Bland is listening in on one of the noisier creatures in San Francisco Bay, using physics to analyze the mating song of the toadfish. While fish don't have vocal chords, they have innovative ...

Cooperative behavior is for the birds

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cooperative behaviors are rare in the animal kingdom and remain a great enigma for evolutionary biologists. A new study by Frederique Dubois, a professor at the University of Montreal Department of Biology ...

Deceptive behavior may (deceivingly) promote cooperation

(Phys.org) —Tricking someone into trusting you in order to gain something from them is common behavior in both the animal and human worlds. From cuckoo birds that trick other bird species into raising their young, to cunning ...

How to create less selfish societies?

(GPEARI, Portugal) -- Cooperation, despite being now considered the third force of evolution, just behind mutation and natural selection, is difficult to explain in the context of an evolutionary process based on competition ...

'Pay it forward' pays off

For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts - acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation - spread just as easily as bad. And it takes ...

Rethinking the roots of altruism

For decades, researchers working to understand how altruistic behavior evolved have relied on a concept known as inclusive fitness, which holds that organisms receive an evolutionary benefit—and are able to pass on their ...

The right thing to do: Why do we follow unspoken group rules?

How you dress, talk, eat and even what you allow yourself to feel - these often unspoken rules of a group are social norms, and many are internalized to such a degree that you probably don't even notice them. Following norms, ...

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