Animal behavior

Recent articles

Escaping groupthink: What animals’ behavioral quirks reveal about the brain

Neuroscientists have long ignored the variability in animals’ behavioral responses in favor of studying differences across groups. But work on the brain differences that underlie that variability is beginning to pay off.

By Angie Voyles Askham
23 May 2025 | 10 min listen
Two prairie voles touch snouts in a tank.

Brain gene expression syncs between bonded prairie voles

The overlapping activity in the animals’ nucleus accumbens may underpin pair bonding, a new preprint suggests.

By Shaena Montanari
10 January 2025 | 5 min read
Illustration of cranes attempting to assemble a structure out of very small black squares.

In case you missed it: Standout news stories from 2024

These five stories—on the pregnant brain, a failed imaging method and more—top our list of some of the most notable neuroscience research findings this year.

By The Transmitter
23 December 2024 | 2 min read
Research image of neurons firing in the hippocampus of Egyptian fruit bats.

Egyptian fruit bats’ neural patterns represent different experimenters

The findings underscore the importance of accounting for “experimenter effects” on lab animals.

By Sneha Khedkar
13 August 2024 | 4 min read
Neuroscientist Nacho Sanguinetti deadpanning the camera as he sits at his desk with a photo cutout of an agouti on his computer.

Improvising to study brains in the wild: Q&A with Nacho Sanguinetti-Scheck

A joke at a neuroscience summer program nearly a decade ago ignited a lifelong research interest for this Uruguayan scientist—one that plays on his comedic strengths.

By Rebecca Horne
9 July 2024 | 7 min read
Close-up image of a dead fly with visible growths protruding from its abdomen due to Entomophthora fungus infection.

Mind control in zombie flies: Q&A with Carolyn Elya

A parasitic fungus compels its insect host to behave in strange ways by hijacking secretory neurons and circadian pathways.

By Shaena Montanari
25 June 2024 | 5 min read

Dancing in the dark: Honeybees use antennae to decode nestmates’ waggles

The insects align their antennae with their body’s angle to a dancer—information that vector-processing circuitry in the brain deciphers into a flight path, a new study suggests.

By Shaena Montanari
3 April 2024 | 0 min watch
A 3D map shows the point at which elephant seals begin spiraling during REM sleep.

Wild and free: Understanding animal behavior beyond the lab

Technological advancements have made it possible to study animals in more natural settings, but researchers are debating what that really means and whether natural is always better.

By Shaena Montanari
20 March 2024 | 9 min listen

Explore more from The Transmitter

Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order

Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.

By Laura Dattaro
30 June 2025 | 4 min read

How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)

Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.

By Ashley Juavinett
30 June 2025 | 10 min read

Astrocytes sense neuromodulators to orchestrate neuronal activity and shape behavior

Astrocytes serve as crucial mediators of neuromodulatory processes previously attributed to direct communication between neurons, four new studies show.

By Claudia López Lloreda
27 June 2025 | 9 min listen