3 Articles Highlighting Observations & Study of Animal Behavior
ARTICLE #1
TITLE
The Zombie Ants
DESCRIPTION
Edward O. Wilson’s name should be as famous in Psychology as it is in biology for his work in helping us understand animal behavior. Not only behavior but also for helping students understand the scientific methodology used for research. This is a wonderful article of his research with ant behavior that both the professor and student will find fascinating! Wilson succinctly describes the ant observations and his exciting discovery. It is a really good example of how animal behaviors are studies.
SOURCE
New York Times, August 21, 2020, by Edward O. Wilson
(Dr. Wilson is an emeritus professor at Harvard and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes)
LINK TO RESOURCE
(Tiny URL) https://tinyurl.com/y2tezqe9
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ARTICLE #2
TITLE
How Do Dogs Learn?
DESCRIPTION
How do dogs learn? And what can they learn? Are breeds different? How do you collect data and do studies on the topic? Very smartly using crowd sourcing, the investigators were able to ask dog owners to do particular observations with their own dogs and submit the data for analysis. The researchers were interested in topics of learning variables, cognition, as well as the genetic differences of each breed. “As genomic sequencing has become more affordable, scientists have begun to understand the genes behind physical features such as body shape and size. But understanding the genes behind dog cognition—the mental processes that underlie dogs’ ability to learn, reason, communicate, remember, and solve problems—is a much trickier and thornier task. Now, in a pair of new studies published in Animal Cognition and in Integrative and Comparative Biology, a team of researchers has begun to quantify just how much variation in dog cognition exists, and to show how much of it has a genetic basis.” The article is a great example of how researchers approach questions and the methods used to ascertain answers. Students who find animal studies interesting will find this one fascinating.
SOURCE
Smithsonian Magazine, July 31, 2020, by Viviane Callier
LINK TO RESOURCE
(Tiny URL) https://tinyurl.com/yynpmnxz
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ARTICLE #3
TITLE
What Animal Minds Can Tell Us About Our Own
DESCRIPTION
What a fascinating research article highlighting the work of Alexandra Rosati, PhD at the University of Michigan. The article from the APA Monitor describes the types of research that Rosati, as well as colleagues and students, do with different primates studying their cognitive abilities. “Rosati’s research is part anthropology and part evolutionary biology. But her lab is situated in the psychology department, and she couldn’t tackle existential questions about the evolution of human thinking without leaning heavily on psychological science. “My overarching research goal is to understand where complex human cognition comes from, and more generally, how cognition evolves at all,” she says. “By combining ideas from psychology, about how the mind works, with ideas from anthropology, about what the mind is for, we can come up with entirely new things to study—things that perhaps nobody would have thought of otherwise.” As the definition of Psychology includes the study of animal behavior, those students interested in the field will really find this a fascinating reading and resource. Further the article describes the types of cognitive science research that occurs across disciplines.
SOURCE
APA Monitor, January 1, 2020, by Kirsten Weir
LINK TO RESOURCE
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/01/career-animal-minds
(Tiny URL) https://tinyurl.com/y2pv6ykr
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CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
•Why do Psychologists study animal behavior?
•What can be learned by studying animals? Can the data from animal studies be generalized to humans?
•What are some of the practical reasons to study animal behavior?
•Why is Edward O. Wilson so fascinated by ant behavior? How and What does he learn by studying “zombie” ants?
•How are the studies of canine (dog) conducted according to the article? What conclusions are drawn from the studies of canine (dog) learning? Is there a practical application?
•The APA Monitor article describes studies of primate cognition. How are the studies conducted? What are some of the conclusions? Can the work be generalized to human behavior?
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