Reef mantas in Indonesia exhibit social preferences and form distinct social groups.

Can people’s social skills affect their experience of time?

Researchers studying macaques in Morocco find that socialization improves the monkeys’ odds of surviving the winter. 

The University of Chicago psychology professor made fundamental contributions to understanding the neural mechanisms of social experiences.  

Dominant male mammals are particularly at risk of infection by parasites.

Research into the biological basis of gender identity is in its infancy, but clues are beginning to emerge.

Brain studies have yielded a mixed picture of the neural similarities and differences between people of different genders.

Surrounded by a projection screen, a fly’s flight path is influenced by a collection of moving dots.

Researchers track a fish in a virtual-reality system as it responds to projections of other fish of the same species.

Experiments that place untethered fish, flies, and mice in simulated environments give clues about the animals’ social behavior.

In Chapter 6, “The Hormonal Essence of the T-Rex?” author Cordelia Fine considers the biological dogma that testes, and the powerful hormones they exude, are the root of all sexual inequality.

Genetic variants on chromosome 26 appears to play a role in a dog’s tendency to turn to people for help.

Dog owners bond with their four-legged friends via the same hormonal pathways through which human mothers bond with their babies.

People tend to sniff their mitts after shaking hands with someone of the same sex, suggesting that the traditional greeting may transmit chemosensory signals.

In mice, a transcriptional regulator, β-catenin, activates a microRNA-processing pathway in the nucleus accumbens to promote resilience to social stress.

Researchers aim to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which a single genotype gives rise to diverse castes in eusocial organisms.

A preliminary trial finds that teaching parents certain therapeutic interactions for babies showing early signs of autism may improve the infants’ future social development.

A round-up of recent discoveries in behavior research

Crowdsourcing biomedical research; bird flu contagion?; zebrafish shed light on inherited muscle disorder; the economics of the Human Genome Project; the epigenetics of pair bonding