Walter Bradford Cannon, an American physiologist, was the person who coined the term fight or flight response.  His theory states that animals react to frightful/threatening situations with an activation of the sympathetic nervous system.  In a response to fear, animals (including humans) will have nerve stimulation in the brain which will then cause an increase [...]

I spend a whole lotta time on the internet “working”.  One of my favorite “jobs” is visiting the Macaulay Library archive.  Do you love animals? The sounds animals make? Videos of animals? The library is browsable by taxonomy – anthropods, mammals, birds, reptiles, fish. Check it out and share your findings with us! From the [...]

By looking at the firing patterns of a group of cells in rats, scientists at MIT were able to determine that animals do dream and that their dreams are connected to actual experiences.  The experiment consisted of monitoring brain activity in trained rats running on a circular track for food rewards. This created distinct neuron [...]

1.  Pigeons are unusual in that they can pass the mirror test (which tests whether an animal recognizes its reflection as an image of itself) – they can even discriminate themselves in videos. 2.  Pigeons can understand the relations between relations (For example, the relation between A and A and the relation between B and [...]

The last couple of months I have been walking around the pasadena area, looking down and stopping to collect dead insects along the streets.  The image is a selection of some of my favorites. There are over a million different species of insects! Starting from the bottom middle and going counter clockwise: 1.  Ten Lined [...]