Download or read book Exploring Animal Social Networks written by Darren P. Croft and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-21 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social network analysis is used widely in the social sciences to study interactions among people, groups, and organizations, yet until now there has been no book that shows behavioral biologists how to apply it to their work on animal populations. Exploring Animal Social Networks provides a practical guide for researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students in ecology, evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and zoology. Existing methods for studying animal social structure focus either on one animal and its interactions or on the average properties of a whole population. This book enables researchers to probe animal social structure at all levels, from the individual to the population. No prior knowledge of network theory is assumed. The authors give a step-by-step introduction to the different procedures and offer ideas for designing studies, collecting data, and interpreting results. They examine some of today's most sophisticated statistical tools for social network analysis and show how they can be used to study social interactions in animals, including cetaceans, ungulates, primates, insects, and fish. Drawing from an array of techniques, the authors explore how network structures influence individual behavior and how this in turn influences, and is influenced by, behavior at the population level. Throughout, the authors use two software packages--UCINET and NETDRAW--to illustrate how these powerful analytical tools can be applied to different animal social organizations.

Download or read book Animal Social Networks written by Dr. Jens Krause and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the application of network theory to the social organization of animals.

Download or read book Exploring Animal Social Networks written by Darren P. Croft and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social network analysis is used widely in the social sciences to study interactions among people, groups, and organizations, yet until now there has been no book that shows behavioral biologists how to apply it to their work on animal populations. Exploring Animal Social Networks provides a practical guide for researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students in ecology, evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and zoology. Existing methods for studying animal social structure focus either on one animal and its interactions or on the average properties of a whole population. This book enables researchers to probe animal social structure at all levels, from the individual to the population. No prior knowledge of network theory is assumed. The authors give a step-by-step introduction to the different procedures and offer ideas for designing studies, collecting data, and interpreting results. They examine some of today's most sophisticated statistical tools for social network analysis and show how they can be used to study social interactions in animals, including cetaceans, ungulates, primates, insects, and fish. Drawing from an array of techniques, the authors explore how network structures influence individual behavior and how this in turn influences, and is influenced by, behavior at the population level. Throughout, the authors use two software packages--UCINET and NETDRAW--to illustrate how these powerful analytical tools can be applied to different animal social organizations.

Download or read book The Social Animal written by David Brooks and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER With unequaled insight and brio, New York Times columnist David Brooks has long explored and explained the way we live. Now Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life. This is the story of how success happens, told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica. Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to old age, illustrating a fundamental new understanding of human nature along the way: The unconscious mind, it turns out, is not a dark, vestigial place, but a creative one, where most of the brain’s work gets done. This is the realm where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made—the natural habitat of The Social Animal. Brooks reveals the deeply social aspect of our minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. He demolishes conventional definitions of success and looks toward a culture based on trust and humility. The Social Animal is a moving intellectual adventure, a story of achievement and a defense of progress. It is an essential book for our time—one that will have broad social impact and will change the way we see ourselves and the world.

Download or read book Social Network Theory and Educational Change written by Alan J. Daly and published by Harvard Education Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Network Theory and Educational Change offers a provocative and fascinating exploration of how social networks in schools can impede or facilitate the work of education reform. Drawing on the work of leading scholars, the book comprises a series of studies examining networks among teachers and school leaders, contrasting formal and informal organizational structures, and exploring the mechanisms by which ideas, information, and influence flow from person to person and group to group. The case studies provided in the book reflect a rich variety of approaches and methodologies, showcasing the range and power of this dynamic new mode of analysis. An introductory chapter places social network theory in context and explains the basic tools and concepts, while a concluding chapter points toward new directions in the field. Taken together, they make a powerful statement: that the success or failure of education reform ultimately is not solely the result of technical plans and blueprints, but of the relational ties that support or constrain the pace, depth, and direction of change. This unique volume provides an invaluable introduction to an emerging and increasingly important field of education research.

Download or read book Play and Exploration in Children and Animals written by Thomas G. Power and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999-11-01 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Play is a paradox. Why would the young of so many species--the very animals at greatest risk for injury and predation--devote so much time and energy to an activity that by definition has no immediate purpose? This question has long puzzled students of animal behavior, and has been the focus of considerable empirical investigation and debate. In this first comprehensive and state-of-the-art review of what we have learned from decades of research on exploration and play in children and animals, Power examines the paradox from all angles. Covering solitary activity as well as play with peers, siblings, and parents, he considers the nature, development, and functions of play, as well as the gender differences in early play patterns. A major purpose is to explore the relevance of the animal literature for understanding human behavior. The nature and amount of children's play varies significantly across cultures, so the author makes cross-cultural comparisons wherever possible. The scope is broad and the range multidisciplinary. He draws on studies by developmental researchers in psychology and other fields, ethologists, anthropologists, sociologists, sociolinguists, early childhood educators, and pediatricians. And he places research on play in the context of research on such related phenomena as prosocial behavior and aggression. Finally, Power points out directions for further inquiry and implications for those who work with young children and their parents. Researchers and students will find Play and Exploration in Children and Animals an invaluable summary of controversies, methods, and findings; practitioners and educators will find it an invaluable compendium of information relevant to their efforts to enrich play experiences.

Download or read book Shared Lives of Humans and Animals written by Tuomas Räsänen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals are conscious beings that form their own perspective regarding the lifeworlds in which they exist, and according to which they act in relation to their species and other animals. In recent decades a thorough transformation in societal research has taken place, as many groups that were previously perceived as being passive or subjugated objects have become active subjects. This fundamental reassessment, first promoted by feminist and radical studies, has subsequently been followed by spatial and material turns that have brought non-human agency to the fore. In human–animal relations, despite a power imbalance, animals are not mere objects but act as agents. They shape our material world and our encounters with them influence the way we think about the world and ourselves. This book focuses on animal agency and interactions between humans and animals. It explores the reciprocity of human–animal relations and the capacity of animals to act and shape human societies. The chapters draw on examples from the Global North to explore how human life in modernity has been and is shaped by the sentience, autonomy, and physicality of various animals, particularly in landscapes where communities and wild animals exist in close proximity. It offers a timely contribution to animal studies, environmental geography, environmental history, and social science and humanities studies of the environment more broadly.

Download or read book Supernavigators written by David Barrie and published by The Experiment. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Just astonishing . . . Our natural navigational capacities are no match for those of the supernavigators in this eye-opening book.”—Frans de Waal, The New York Times Book Review Publisher's note: Supernavigators was published in the UK under the title Incredible Journeys. Animals plainly know where they’re going, but how they know has remained a stubborn mystery—until now. Supernavigators is a globe-trotting voyage of discovery alongside astounding animals of every stripe: dung beetles that steer by the Milky Way, box jellyfish that can see above the water (with a few of their twenty-four eyes), sea turtles that sense Earth’s magnetic field, and many more. David Barrie consults animal behaviorists and Nobel Prize–winning scientists to catch us up on the cutting edge of animal intelligence—revealing these wonders in a whole new light.

Download or read book Wild Justice written by Marc Bekoff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male? Or a rat who refused to push a lever for food when he saw that doing so caused another rat to be shocked? Aren’t these clear signs that animals have recognizable emotions and moral intelligence? With Wild Justice Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce unequivocally answer yes. Marrying years of behavioral and cognitive research with compelling and moving anecdotes, Bekoff and Pierce reveal that animals exhibit a broad repertoire of moral behaviors, including fairness, empathy, trust, and reciprocity. Underlying these behaviors is a complex and nuanced range of emotions, backed by a high degree of intelligence and surprising behavioral flexibility. Animals, in short, are incredibly adept social beings, relying on rules of conduct to navigate intricate social networks that are essential to their survival. Ultimately, Bekoff and Pierce draw the astonishing conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species: morality is an evolved trait that we unquestionably share with other social mammals. Sure to be controversial, Wild Justice offers not just cutting-edge science, but a provocative call to rethink our relationship with—and our responsibilities toward—our fellow animals.

Download or read book Analyzing Animal Societies written by Hal Whitehead and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals lead rich social lives. They care for one another, compete for resources, and mate. Within a society, social relationships may be simple or complex and usually vary considerably, both between different groups of individuals and over time. These social systems are fundamental to biological organization, and animal societies are central to studies of behavioral and evolutionary biology. But how do we study animal societies? How do we take observations of animals fighting, grooming, or forming groups and produce a realistic description or model of their societies? Analyzing AnimalSocieties presents a conceptual framework for analyzing social behavior and demonstrates how to put this framework into practice by collecting suitable data on the interactions and associations of individuals so that relationships can be described, and, from these, models can be derived. In addition to presenting the tools, Hal Whitehead illustrates their applicability using a wide range of real data on a variety of animal species—from bats and chimps to dolphins and birds. The techniques that Whitehead describes will be profitably adopted by scientists working with primates, cetaceans, birds, and ungulates, but the tools can be used to study societies of invertebrates, amphibians, and even humans. Analyzing AnimalSocieties will become a standard reference for those studying vertebrate social behavior and will give to these studies the kind of quality standard already in use in other areas of the life sciences.

Download or read book Animals as the Third in Relational Psychotherapy written by Jo Silbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-03 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals as the Third in Relational Psychotherapy: Exploring Theory, Frame and Practice elegantly and skilfully weaves together relevant literature, clinical reflections, compelling case material and contemporary psychoanalytic theory to demonstrate how the presence of an animal in the treatment arena can eventually bring about relational, interpersonal and intrapsychic change. Contemporary relational psychoanalytic literature has been virtually silent about our relationship with animals, a feature seemingly intrinsic to our relational worlds. This book seeks to remediate this void by giving voice to the practice and principles of working relationally in the presence of an animal. The text accentuates recurrent themes: animals are seen by human beings as significant subjective others and are treated as legitimate partners for relational and interpersonal processes, attachment figures and transferential objects; animals in the psychotherapy environment can play the role as a ‘bridge’ from the unconscious to the conscious, from the dissociated to the experienced, from the intrapsychic to the interpersonal; as the third in the treatment arena, the animal helps to reveal the field, bringing conflicts to life and making them available for analysis in the clinical setting. In seeking to authorise the incorporation of animals into the practice of relational psychotherapy the text applies conventional concepts to novel contexts; it extends psychoanalytic and relational principles to create a theoretical framework within which to consider the therapeutic effects of working in the triadic interactions of therapist, client and animal and thus also begins to evolve a new version of relational psychoanalytic practice. The authors value the human-animal experience in treatment and repeatedly show how the application of a relational psychoanalytic lens to the patient-therapist-animal triad can enhance the therapeutic process in ways that encourage progressive communication, understanding of the patient and the relaxing of defences, leading to the symbolising of relational capacity, therapeutic breakthrough and intrapsychic change.

Download or read book The Historical Animal written by Susan Nance and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The conventional history of animals could be more accurately described as the history of human ideas about animals. Only in the last few decades have scholars from a wide variety of disciplines attempted to document the lives of historical animals in ways that recognize their agency as sentient beings with complex intelligence. This collection advances the field further, inviting us to examine our recorded history through an animal-centric lens to discover how animals have altered the course of our collective past. The seventeen scholars gathered here present case studies from the Pacific Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, involving species ranging from gorillas and horses to salamanders and orcas. Together they seek out new methodologies, questions, and stories that challenge accepted historical assumptions and structures. Drawing upon environmental, social, and political history, the contributors employ research from such wide-ranging fields as philosophy and veterinary medicine, embracing a radical interdisciplinarity that is crucial to understanding our nonhuman past. Grounded in the knowledge that there has never been a purely human time in world history, this collection asks and answers an incredibly urgent question for historians and others interested in the nonhuman past: in an age of mass extinctions, mass animal captivity, and climate change, when we know much of what animals have done in the past, which of our activities will we want to change in the future?

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Animal Cognition written by Allison B. Kaufman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-22 with total page 1032 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook lays out the science behind how animals think, remember, create, calculate, and remember. It provides concise overviews on major areas of study such as animal communication and language, memory and recall, social cognition, social learning and teaching, numerical and quantitative abilities, as well as innovation and problem solving. The chapters also explore more nuanced topics in greater detail, showing how the research was conducted and how it can be used for further study. The authors range from academics working in renowned university departments to those from research institutions and practitioners in zoos. The volume encompasses a wide variety of species, ensuring the breadth of the field is explored.

Download or read book Why We Love and Exploit Animals written by Kristof Dhont and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-08 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book brings together research and theorizing on human-animal relations, animal advocacy, and the factors underlying exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards animals. Why do we both love and exploit animals? Assembling some of the world’s leading academics and with insights and experiences gleaned from those on the front lines of animal advocacy, this pioneering collection breaks new ground, synthesizing scientific perspectives and empirical findings. The authors show the complexities and paradoxes in human-animal relations and reveal the factors shaping compassionate versus exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards animals. Exploring topical issues such as meat consumption, intensive farming, speciesism, and effective animal advocacy, this book demonstrates how we both value and devalue animals, how we can address animal suffering, and how our thinking about animals is connected to our thinking about human intergroup relations and the dehumanization of human groups. This is essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals in the social and behavioral sciences interested in human-animal relations, and will also strongly appeal to members of animal rights organizations, animal rights advocates, policy makers, and charity workers.

Download or read book Who Cares About Wildlife written by Michael J. Manfredo and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-29 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who Cares About Wildlife? integrates social science theory in order to provide a conceptual structure for understanding and studying human interaction with wildlife. A thorough review of the current literature in conceptual areas, including norms, values, attitudes, emotions, wildlife value orientations, cultural change, and evolutionary forces/inherited tendencies is provided, and the importance of these areas in studying human-wildlife relationships is highlighted. No other book both considers the human relationship with wildlife and provides a theoretical framework for understanding this relationship on the individual, as well as cultural level. Who Cares About Wildlife? will be valuable both to students and to practitioners in wildlife management and conservation, as well those interested in the human relationship with wildlife, natural resources, and the environment.

Download or read book Social Learning In Animals written by Cecilia M. Heyes and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1996-05-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The increasing realization among behaviorists and psychologists is that many animals learn by observation as members of social systems. Such settings contribute to the formation of culture. This book combines the knowledge of two groups of scientists with different backgrounds to establish a working consensus for future research. The book is divided into two major sections, with contributions by a well-known, international, and interdisciplinary team which integrates these growing areas of inquiry. - Integrates the broad range of scientific approaches being used in the studies of social learning and imitation, and society and culture - Provides an introduction to this field of study as well as a starting point for the more experienced researcher - Chapters are succinct reviews of innovative discoveries and progress made during the past decade - Includes statements of varied theoretical perspectives on controversial topics - Authoritative contributions by an international team of leading researchers

Download or read book Animal Talk written by Tim Friend and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-02-09 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If animal behavior is mostly instinctual, why do animals need to communicate? Is it possible that there is a universal language spoken and understood by all animals on earth, including humans? Do barks, growls, rumbles, chirps, yips, and meows have communicative meanings? "No matter what species," writes acclaimed science journalist Tim Friend, "we're all concerned with the same topics of conversation -- sex, real estate, who's boss, and what's for dinner." In Animal Talk, Friend draws upon years of field research, interviews with preeminent scientists, and lively personal anecdotes to find out how our animal neighbors communicate and what their languages mean. From bird calls to whale songs, laughing hyenas to rattling snakes, an elephant cry in the jungle to the bark of a Chihuahua in his own backyard, Friend tells the grand story of animal communication through the sounds, stripes, scents, and signals of the animals themselves.