… there is definitely something special about the bond we have with dogs. Their ability to read our communicative gestures makes them seem “in tune” with us. And their attentiveness to our every move can’t help but make us feel special. There is one study that shows that dogs would prefer to spend time with humans than their own species, which is unusual for an animal. Every dog owner is familiar with that rise in spirits as a thumping tail greets you at the door, and from the enthusiasm dogs have for us, it’s hard to believe the feeling isn’t mutual.

Dog behavioral scientist Brian Hare

I think “dog behavioral scientist” is probably in the running for coolest job of all time. Humans and dogs have evolved hand in hand, with our ancestors selecting (on purpose and accidentally) the particular traits in these descendants of wolves that helped our tribes and villages hunt, stay safe, and be happy. No other species is so deeply in tune with what we want.

Brian Hare has also developed an online program called Dognition. For a small fee, you get a set of games to test your dog’s particular cognitive talents, helping to advance dog science while getting to know your best friend’s mind that much better.

Check out the full interview with Brian Hare: The Brilliance of the Dog Mind at Scientific American

If you really want to dig into the mind of your drooly companion, Brian and his co-researcher wroteL The Genius of Dogs.

Source: scientificamerican.com

Weird Science: Hot Hot High Heels

“Like Louboutins with the red bottoms, you gotta have ‘em, you glad you got ‘em” - Jay-Z

Here’s a fascinating tale of culture intersecting with science intersecting with fashion. High heels: Some women hate them, some women love them. Lots of men love them too, for that matter. Is there something about high heels and their affect on a women’s gait and posture that accentuates biological cues of female attractiveness? A team of researchers set out to find a clue. They had several women walk in high heels, tracked their motion, and then had the “attractiveness” of their walks judged by volunteers (who were mostly female, it turns out). Scicurious has a great biological and cultural breakdown of the work at Neurotic Physiology.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the high-heeled walks were judged more attractive. But why? Is it the added swing of the hips and the “pelvic tilt” (if you know what I’m sayin’)? Is it the shorter stride length on average? Maybe. But Sci makes a superb point as she explains that observations like these are just too tied up in history and culture to ever really be untangled from the biological influence:

“And we all know that that TYPE of walk is what is supposed to be sexy. We know that sexy is associated with the kind of walking done in heels. When there’s so much history tied up in it, I don’t think we can definitively say that the walking they observed was more attractive because heels increase attractiveness. It could be more attractive because that’s what we’ve beentaught to think. Secondly, are the women changing their walk in the heels due to cultural factors? Most of us have been told that heels make us feel more feminine, and all these women may have believed it. They may have walked more attractively as a result. Finally, the women could have been walking more attractively because the heels make them feel sexy. We’ve all been told heels are sexy. We’ve all seen the movies and the videos. And most every little kid who has wanted to put on heels has wanted to add that little swing to their step. By the time you’re an adult, that little swing has become a lot bigger, and a lot more subconscious. I also find it very interesting that the authors couldn’t get a correlation between the biomechanical changes and the ratings of attractiveness. I would think that, say, if it all came down to pelvic tilt biologically, you would at least see a correlation there, which makes me wonder if this really is all the result of a high heeled culture rather than a deep high heeled drive.”

So yes, people generally seem to view high heels as an attractiveness booster. But there’s likely a mix of biology and culture behind that observation. That’s an important thing to remember when looking at any story about human cultural aspect X and biological factor Y … our humanity is muddied with both cultural and biological evolution, and one just never quite explains the other.

(via Neurotic Physiology)

Source: scientopia.org

Why We Cry: The Science of Sobbing and Emotional Tearing

Be sure to check out this feature over at Brain Pickings, featuring excerpts from Robert R. Provine’s Curious Behavior.

Crying is a uniquely human endeavor, in the sense of it being connected to emotion. So, uh … why the waterworks, science?

“…whether intentional or not, as adult or child, you cry to solicit assistance, whether physical aid or emotional solace. Paradoxically, your adult cry for help is more private than the noisy, promiscuous pronouncement of childhood, often occurring at home, where it finds a select audience. The developmental shift from vocal crying to visual tearing favors the face-to-face encounters of an intimate setting.”

It’s pretty clear, from a behavior standpoint, that emotional eye-gushing is a literal cry for help, for child and adult. It’s interesting to see how crying manifests differently as our relationships mature. But where did the basic act of tearing up come from?

An interesting component in tears, a cell stimulus protein called NGF (nerve growth factor), may have something to do with how our tears evolved from simple lubrication to a way to stimulate eye wound healing and pain-relief, and then finally as a way to get extra care given by our tribe members. Imagine a time before crying was linked to an emotional state: 

Non-emotional, healing tears may have originally signaled trauma to the eyes, eliciting caregiving by tribe members or inhibiting physical aggression by adversaries. This primal signal may have later evolved through ritualization to become a sign of emotional as well as physical distress. 

Very cool stuff. Check out the rest here.

Did Humans Invent Music?

Psychologists Gary Marcus & Geoffrey Miller debate the origins of human music and its associated behaviors. Is it a cultural invention, a technology that piggy-backs on language? Or is there a deeper genetic wiring behind our music and its neurological effects?

Marcus says:

“Ancient” seems like a bit of stretch to me. The oldest known musical artifacts are some bone flutes that are only 35,000 years old, a blink in an evolutionary time. And although kids are drawn to music early, they still prefer language when given a choice, and it takes years before children learn something as basic as the fact that minor chords are sad. Of course, music is universal now, but so are mobile phones, and we know that mobile phones aren’t evolved adaptations. When we think about music, it’s important to remember that an awful lot of features that we take for granted in Western music—like harmony and 12-bar blues structure, to say nothing of pianos or synthesizers, simply didn’t exist 1,000 years ago.

While Miller says:

Darwin argued that music evolved mainly by sexual selection through mate choice—and that we’re uncomfortable acknowledging that fact. He wrote back in 1871 that, “The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which his half-human ancestors long ago aroused each other’s ardent passions, during their courtship and rivalry.” He knew that music didn’t need to have a “survival value” for the individual or the group; it could spread through purely reproductive benefits. He suggested that the more musically talented proto-humans attracted more sexual partners, or higher-quality sexual partners, than their less-musical rivals. We see sexual selection for music in many other species—insect song, frog song, bird song, whale song, and gibbon song—so I think that’s a reasonable default theory for how humans evolved music. It’s the theory to beat.


It’s an article that makes a compelling case for both sides. I think the jury is still out, based on the current state of neuroscience and genetics in this area. Give it a read and see what you think.

And if you absolutely refuse to take a side, Mark Changizi comes down in the middle and says they might not have to be either instinct OR invention.

Much of the research confirms things we’ve always suspected. For example, in general people who are in good romantic relationships are happier than those who aren’t. Healthy people are happier than sick people. People who participate in their churches are happier than those who don’t. Rich people are happier than poor people. And so on.

That said, there have been some surprises. For example, while all these things do make people happier, it’s astonishing how little any one of them matters. Yes, a new house or a new spouse will make you happier, but not much and not for long. As it turns out, people are not very good at predicting what will make them happy and how long that happiness will last. They expect positive events to make them much happier than those events actually do, and they expect negative events to make them unhappier than they actually do.

Harvard Business Review interviews Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness. (via curiositycounts)

(via curiositycounts)

Porn on the Mind

“Let them eat porn” I believe it was once said …

A new report in SciAm Mind says that it’s pretty hard to find evidence that watching porn is bad for your brain. Interestingly enough, for the male side of this study they compared to “your average non-porn-watching male” which of course is impossible, as it does not exist.

The take-away from Ingrid Wicklegren’s column I linked to is that people’s brains are shaped one way or another based on many factors in their development. But by the time they start/don’t start watching porn, their habits reflect more who they already are rather than shape them in any real way.

I’ll leave you to weigh her last claim: That watching porn may be beneficial to some aspects of society and behavior …

Campus hookup culture: People hooking up in college is nothing new, despite what prim and proper vintage films would have you believe. But the current “hookup culture” on today’s college campuses may not be doing a very good job of satisfying what young people want to get out of sex and intimate relationships, even if they think they just want the boom-boom.

(via Boing Boing)

Source: Boing Boing