COOPERATIVE BREEDING AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN ANIMAL SOCIETIES.

Brings together long-term studies of cooperation in vertebrates that challenge our understanding of the evolution of social behavior.

Cooperative breeders are species in which more than a pair of individuals assist in the production of young. Cooperative breeding is found in only a few hundred bird species world-wide, and understanding this often strikingly altruistic behaviour has remained an important challenge in behavioural ecology for over 30 years. This book highlights the theoretical, empirical and technical advances that have taken place in the field of cooperative breeding research since the publication of the seminal work Cooperative Breeding in Birds: Long-term Studies of Behavior and Ecology (1990, HB ISBN 0521 372984, PB ISBN 0521 378907). Organized conceptually, special attention is given to ways in which cooperative breeders have proved fertile subjects for testing modern advances to classic evolutionary problems including those of sexual selection, sex-ratio manipulation, life-history evolution, partitioning of reproduction and incest avoidance. It will be of interest to both students and researchers interested in behaviour and ecology.

The book aims to integrate our understanding of mammalian societies into a novel synthesis that is relevant to behavioural ecologists, ecologists, and anthropologists. It adopts a coherent structure that deals initially with the characteristics and strategies of females, before covering those of males, cooperative societies and hominid societies. It reviews our current understanding both of the structure of societies and of the strategies of individuals; it combines coverage of relevant areas of theory with coverage of interspecific comparisons, intraspecific comparisons and experiments; it explores both evolutionary causes of different traits and their ecological consequences; and it integrates research on different groups of mammals with research on primates and humans and attempts to put research on human societies into a broader perspective.

This encyclopedia, representing one of the most multi-disciplinary areas of research, is a comprehensive examination of the key areas in animal cognition and behavior. It will serve as a complementary resource to the handbooks and journals that have emerged in the last decade on this topic, and will be a useful resource for student and researcher alike. With comprehensive coverage of this field, key concepts will be explored. These include social cognition, prey and predator detection, habitat selection, mating and parenting, development, genetics, physiology, memory, learning and perception. Attention is also given to animal-human co-evolution and interaction, and animal welfare. All entries are under the purview of acknowledged experts in the field.

Cooperative behaviour has been one of the enigmas of evolutionary theory. This book examines the many facets of cooperative behaviour in primates and humans. It bridges the gap between parallel research in primatology and studies of humans, and highlights both common principles and aspects of human uniqueness, with respect to cooperative behaviour.

This beast has a stone in its eye, also called an Yena, which is believed to make a person able to foresee the future if he keeps it under his tongue. It is true that if an Yena walks round an animal three times, the animal cannot move. For this reason they affirm that it has some sort of magic skill about it. (Translated from Latin, from the twelfth century Bestiary in the University of Cambridge Library. ) Perhaps it is not merely fortuitous that of all the African animals, the ancients should have selected the hyaena as a vehicle for magical powers. Of course, there are solid scientific explanations for this; the animals' nocturnal habits around human habitation, the consumption of people's mortal remains, the spectacular hermaphroditic appearance, the uncanny similarity between the calls of a spotted hyaena and the utterances of deranged humanity. But apart from all rational explanations for the strange hold of the animal over people, there is a magic about hyaenas which can only be understood by those who have watched them for some time. There is a now growing band of us, who came to the African bush with all our prejudices, with all that 'common knowledge' about hyaenas which proved so totally wrong, and who just fell for the spell of animals which were so totally different.