Orangutans yawn contagiously when they see others yawn

For the first time, contagious yawning has now also been found in a species that roams its territory mostly in solitude and is less frequently engaged in social interactions: the orangutan. Publication in Nature Scientific ...

Empowering women could help address climate change

Mitigating current and future damage stemming from climate change depends greatly on the ability of affected populations to adapt to changing conditions. According to an international group of researchers, building capacity ...

Alpha animals must bow to the majority when they abuse their power

Many animal groups decide where to go by a process similar to voting, allowing not only alphas to decide where the group goes next but giving equal say to all group members. But, for many species that live in stable groups—such ...

Vampire bats social distance when they get sick

A new paper in Behavioral Ecology, published by Oxford University Press, finds that wild vampire bats that are sick spend less time near others from their community, which slows how quickly a disease will spread. The research ...

A new social role for echolocation in bats that hunt together

Searching for food at night can be tricky. To find prey in the dark, bats use echolocation, their "sixth sense." But to find food faster, some species, like Molossus molossus, may search within hearing distance of their echolocating ...

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