San Antonio College Library

In the animal world, as in our own, the family unit and social structure are crucial to survival. Animal alliances are as important for caring and sharing as for hunting and killing. Like animals, humans depend on social groups-from the small-scale family unit to a large organization such as the United Nations. By comparing human relationships with perceived animal parallels, this program offers an interesting insight into our shared world.

Drawing on their own research as well as scientific literature including evolutionary biology, animal behavior, ecology, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience, two cetacean biologists submerge themselves in the unique environment in which whales and dolphins live. --Publisher's description.

Although the honeybee is without doubt man's favorite social insect, and the most studied by him, there are twenty thousand other species of bees, many of which are social. This book is the first to offer a systematic account of social behavior in the entire super family Apoidea. Of all the social insects, the various species of bees exhibit perhaps the broadest spectrum of social behavior, including intermediate stages which are scarce or totally...

" ... an essential examination of how animals assemble the basic tool kit that we call the mind: the ability to count, to navigate, to recognize individuals, to communicate, and to socialize."--Jacket.

Myth and media typically cast animals we consider predators or carnivores as unthinking killers--dangerous, unpredictable, and devoid of emotion. But is this portrait valid? By exploring their inner lives, this pioneering book refutes the many misperceptions that hide the true nature of these animals. We discover that great white sharks express tender maternal feelings, rattlesnakes make friends, orcas abide by an ancient moral code, and much more....

"Wolves are charismatic emblems of wilderness. Dogs, which descended from wolves, are models of urbanity. Do free-ranging dogs revert to pack living or are their societies only reminiscent of a wolfish heritage? Focusing on behavioral ecology, this is the first book to assess societies of both gray wolves and domestic dogs living as urban strays and in the feral state. It provides a comprehensive review of wolf genetics, particularly of New World...

Monkey see, monkey do - or does she? Can the behavior of non-human primates, their sociality, their intelligence, their communication - really be chalked up to simple mimicry? Emphatically, absolutely: no. And as famed primatologist Julia Fischer reveals, the human bias inherent in this oft-uttered adage is our loss, for it is only through the study of our primate brethren that we may begin to understand ourselves. An eye-opening blend of storytelling,...