Neuroethology

First of all, sorry for the spamming and x-posting. I'm posting this to advertise the creation of "The Principles of Neurobiotaxis", a new science blog devoted to evolutionary neuroscience. It can be found here, if anyone is interested. Thank you all.
Caio Maximino

Does anyone know where I can find morphometric data for the brain of teleosts? I searched fishbase, but it only presents brain weight:body weight data, and does not present data on any of the species I need...
Thanks!

Communication and understanding

For the first time, remote-control cameras disguised as dung-heaps have infiltrated African elephant herds. Moving slowly across the plains, the 'dungcams' have shot hundreds of hours of elephant footage of the most intimate variety. On watching the footage, you start to believe that elephants may indeed be as intelligent as the great apes. "The communication and understanding is so evident when you get inside the herd," says film-maker John Downer. "I know of no other species, apart from ourselves, who gather to greet a newborn and equally appear to mourn their dead relatives." read more...

A deep-voiced black-capped chickadee may wonder why other birds ignore it, but there may be a good reason behind the snub, says a University of Alberta study that looked into how the bird responds to calls.

Dr. Isabelle Charrier and Dr. Chris Sturdy modified the black- capped chickadee calls, played those sounds back to the bird and observed how they reacted. They found that the chickadee relies on several acoustic features including pitch, order of the notes and rhythm of the call. They also rejected the calls of the control bird, the gray-crowned rosy finch, in favour of their own species. This research is published in the current edition of the journal, “Behavioural Processes.”

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When Stan Kuczaj and Lauren Highfill were snorkeling among some rough-toothed dolphins off the coast of Honduras last year, they saw an intriguing game among the animals.

Two adults and a youngster were passing a plastic bag back and forth, as in a game of catch, the two researchers wrote in the October issue of the research journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

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Social learning and use of social information in general have been understood to be largely restricted to vertebrates. Among insects, social learning or processes akin to it have been reported only in colonial species (bees, ants, termites), suggesting that highly structured social organizations may have assisted the evolution of social learning. However, learning about predators or predation risk from others may constitute life-saving information, and not just in vertebrates or colonial insects. Theory predicts that social acquisition of such information should therefore have been evolutionarily favored in any species where members of that species can observe each other and behave differently under conditions of predation risk.

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At the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute's Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, professor Marco Iacoboni and his team have been conducting some breakthrough experiments, leading to some very interesting findings.

I spoke with Dr. Iacoboni about his work and its implications.

"Mirror neurons," he told me, "were discovered a little bit more than 10 years ago in the brains of monkeys. These neurons are in the part of the brain that controls movements-they fire (turn on) when the monkey wants to do something."

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COLLEGE STATION – This is all underground, and naked mole-rats prefer it that way: Momma naked mole-rat is the only one having babies, and she's got several naked mole-rat boyfriends.

Were it human, the family would argue it out on a national talk show. As it is, the social behavior of these tiny rodents has scientists intrigued, right down to their naked mole-rat molecules.

"African mole-rats are very good models for studying social structure. I'm interested in the genetic markers associated with structure," said Colleen Ingram, whose doctoral degree will be bestowed Friday at Texas A&M University based on her findings about the critters' parentage.

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STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colorado (July 18, 2005) – Maternal aggressive/protective behavior is recognized throughout mammalian species, especially during lactation. When hiking, we warn our kids not to approach bear cubs, or to get between a cub and the mother. While driving and you see a fawn, you know a doe can't be too far away and will run headlong to protect it.

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