Insect Hearing provides a broadly based view of the functions, mechanisms, and evolution of hearing in insects. With a single exception, the chapters focus on problems of hearing and their solutions, rather than being focused on particular taxa. The exception, hearing in Drosophila, is justified because, due to its ever growing toolbox of genetic and optical techniques, Drosophila is rapidly becoming one of the most important model systems in neurobiology, including the neurobiology of hea...

Some of the most time-honored questions in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience center on the uniqueness of the human mind. How do we think? What makes us so different from all the other animals on planet Earth? What was the process that created the human mind? Is this process unique or can it be repeated on other planets? The book "On the Origin of the Human Mind" attempts to provide an answer to these questions. It is organized into three chapters: Chapter I "Uniqueness of the Human ...

"An engaging and complex examination of the development of the human brain throughout its evolutionary history" ( Publishers Weekly).After several million years of jostling for ecological space, only one survivor from a host of hominid species remains standing: us. Human beings are extraordinary creatures, and it is the unprecedented human brain that makes them so.In this delightfully accessible book, the authors present the first full, step-by-ste...

Our big brains, our language ability, and our intelligence make us uniquely human.But barely 10,000 years ago (a mere blip in evolutionary time) human-like creatures called "Boskops" flourished in South Africa. They possessed extraordinary features: forebrains roughly 50% larger than ours, and estimated IQs to match--far surpassing our own. Many of these huge fossil skulls have been discovered over the last century, but most of us have never heard of this scientific marvel....

Studies of mechanisms in the brain that allow complicated things to happen in a coordinated fashion have produced some of the most spectacular discoveries in neuroscience. This book provides eloquent support for the idea that spontaneous neuron activity, far from being mere noise, is actually the source of our cognitive abilities. It takes a fresh look at the co-evolution of structure and function in the mammalian brain, illustrating how self-emerged oscillatory timing is the brains fundam...

Throughout their lives animals must complete many tasks, including finding food, avoiding predators, attracting mates, and navigating through a complex and dynamic environment. Consequently, they have evolved a staggering array of sensory organs that are fundamental to survival and reproduction and shape much of their evolution and behaviour. Sensory ecology deals with how animals acquire, process, and use information in their lives, and the sensory systems involved. It investigates the ty...

An extensively revised third edition of this introduction to neuroethology - the neuronal basis of animal behaviour - for zoology, biology and psychology undergraduate students. The book focuses on the roles of individual nerve cells in behaviour, from simple startle responses to complex behaviours such as route learning by rats and singing by crickets and birds. It begins by examining the relationship between brains and behaviour, and showing how study of specialised behaviours reveals ne...

From simple reflexes to complex choreographies of movement, all animal behavior is governed by a nervous system. But what kind of government is it—a dictatorship or a democracy?Nervous systems consist of circuits of interconnected nerve cells (neurons) that transmit and receive information via electrical signals. Every moment, each neuron adds up stimulating and inhibiting inputs from many other neurons to determine whether to send an electrical signal to its recipients. Some circu...

The study of dinosaurs has been experiencing a remarkable renaissance over the past few decades. Scientific understanding of dinosaur anatomy, biology, and evolution has advanced to such a degree that paleontologists often know more about 100-million-year-old dinosaurs than many species of living organisms. This book provides a contemporary review of dinosaur science intended for students, researchers, and dinosaur enthusiasts. It reviews the latest knowledge on dinosaur anatomy and phylog...

Animal life, now and over the past half billion years, is incredibly diverse. Describing and understanding the evolution of this diversity of body plans - from vertebrates such as humans and fish to the numerous invertebrate groups including sponges, insects, molluscs, and the many groups of worms - is a major goal of evolutionary biology. In this book, a group of leading researchers adopt a modern, integrated approach to describe how current molecular genetic techniques and disciplines as...

Building on the success of the first edition and bringing together contributions from a range of experts in the field, the second edition of this guide to research on wild primates covers the latest advances in the field, including new information on field experiments and measuring behaviour. It provides essential information and advice on the technical and practical aspects of both field and laboratory methods, covering topics such as ethnoprimatology; remote sensing; GPS and radio-tracki...

This book provides a convincing argument for the view that whole cells and whole plants growing in competitive wild conditions show aspects of plant behaviour that can be accurately described as 'intelligent'. Trewavas argues that behaviour, like intelligence, must be assessed within the constraints of the anatomical and physiological framework of the organism in question. The fact that plants do not have centralized nervous systems for example, does not exclude intelligent behaviour. Outs...