Seals and sea lions provide clues to evolution of vocalization

A harbor seal relaxing on shore. (Wikipedia Commons, Charles J. Sharp)

Neuroscientists uncovered new insights into a key evolutionary question: Why can humans talk when most animals can’t? 

The journal Science published the research led by Emory University and the New College of Florida. The findings suggest that seals and sea lions may have vocal flexibility as a side effect of developing a brain “bypass” for voluntary breath control. This same bypass allowed them to adapt to aquatic life. 

The comparative study examined the brains of coyotes along with those of sea lions, elephant seals and harbor seals — marine carnivores with varying degrees of vocal control that are evolutionary cousins to canines. 

Seals are among the few animal species known to have the super vocal flexibility that allows them to mimic human voices. Sea lions have also demonstrated good vocal plasticity on a more limited scale. The neurobiology of these capabilities, however, was not known. 

Senior author Gregory Berns, Emory professor of psychology, and first author Peter Cook, a former Emory postdoctoral fellow, used the technique of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on post-mortem animal brains, giving them a view of connective neural pathways across species. 

All the brains used in the study came from wild animals that died naturally in rehabilitation facilities or had to be euthanized due to injuries.

Read the full story here.

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Accuracy test for protein language models shines light into AI 'black box'

Yana Bromberg, right, professor of biology and computer science, and R. Prabakaran, a postdoctoral fellow in the Bromberg lab, are developing computational techniques to study biological complexity. (Photo by Carol Clark)

AI language models, used to generate human-like text to power chatbots and create content, are also revolutionizing biology by treating complex biological data like a language. Language models are increasingly used, for example, to find patterns in DNA and proteins to make predictions and speed research into biological complexity. 

A critical gap, however, is the lack of a method to estimate the reliability of these predictions. 

Computational biologists at Emory University have bridged this gap, developing a simple way to test the accuracy of a language model’s understanding of proteins. Nature Methods published their system, which scores the reliability of a model’s predictions by comparing how it “embeds,” or numerically codifies, synthetic random proteins versus proteins found in nature. 

“To the best of our knowledge, our framework is the first generalized method to quantify protein sequence embedding reliability,” says Yana Bromberg, senior author of the paper and Emory professor of biology and computer science. 

“Our method is a simple, elegant solution to a complex problem,” adds R. Prabakaran, first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in the Bromberg lab. “It’s a foundational method with a lot of scope for a range of language models in science.” 

Read the full story here.

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How the brain charts emotion in a map-like way

Co-authors Philip Kragel, assistant professor of psychology, and Yumeng Ma, a PhD student in Kragel's Emotion Cognition and Computation Lab. (Photos by Carol Clark)

It is well established in psychology that humans conceptualize emotions by features known as valence (the degree of pleasantness or unpleasantness) and arousal (the intensity of bodily reactions, such as rapid breathing or a racing heart). 

If you think of “pleasantness” as longitude and “bodily reaction” as latitude, you can imagine a “mental map,” with nodes that “chart” knowledge of emotion. 

The neural mechanisms giving rise to this configuration, however, have remained unclear. 

Now, a new study reveals that hippocampal-prefrontal circuits — neural structures implicated in forming other types of cognitive maps — could support the mental mapping of emotion. 

Nature Communications published the research by neuroscientists at Emory University. The results showed how the hippocampus represents emotion concepts in a structured hierarchy of “nodes” of pleasantness and bodily reaction, while the ventromedial prefrontal cortex more accurately tracks relationships between these different nodes, or how they are distributed on the mental map.

Read the full story by here.

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Turning Over a New Leaf in Analyses of Natural Products

Emory graduate student William Crandall loves working at the nexus of nature and cutting-edge technology. (Photo by Tharanga Samarakoon)

Scientists developed a new way to help understand what happens in the body when people consume a plant product and the many chemicals it contains. The American Chemical Society’s Journal of Natural Products published the method to quickly analyze the effects of a natural product, developed at Emory University. 

As a test case, the paper focused on biotransformation of chemicals from the kratom plant by human liver cells in a laboratory dish. The researchers developed an automated method — based on high-resolution mass spectrometry and molecular network mapping — to gain a detailed, big-picture view of the resulting metabolites, or chemicals produced. 

The new, streamlined methodology can be broadly applied to nutrition and dietary supplement research, filling a critical gap in the field. 

“Plants evolved extraordinarily complex chemical defenses and signaling systems,” says Cassandra Quave, co-senior author of the study and professor of dermatology at Emory School of Medicine and the Center for the Study of Human Health. “Our new approach in molecular mapping gives us a way to follow how that chemical complexity is reshaped by human metabolism.” 

“Our technique does not just look at how one compound in this plant is metabolized,” adds William Crandall, first author of the study and a PhD student of molecular and systems pharmacology in Emory’s Laney Graduate School. “It shows how dozens of compounds are metabolized at one time.”

“This method marks a major, transformative step in natural products research,” says Dean Jones, co-senior author of the paper and professor in Emory School of Medicine. “A process that used to require years of work now takes just days.”

Read the full story here.

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Epigenetics linked to high-altitude adaptation in Andes

Indigenous people living at high altitude in the Andean highlands have adapted to one of the most extreme environments ever inhabited by humans. (Getty Images/Oleh Slobodeniuk)

DNA sequencing technology makes it possible to explore the genome to learn how humans adapted to live in a wide range of environments. Research has shown, for instance, that Tibetans living at high altitude in the Himalayas have a unique variant of a gene that expands the oxygen-carrying capacity of their blood. 

Scientists, however, have not found a strong signal for this “high-altitude gene” in the genomes of Indigenous people living in the Andes Mountains of South America. It’s been less clear how people adapted to the altitudes greater than 2,500 meters in the Andean highlands, where low-oxygen levels, frigid temperatures and intense ultraviolet radiation make life challenging in the extreme. 

A study led by anthropologists at Emory University took a new approach to explore this Andean mystery.

Read the full story here.

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Unlocking design secrets of deep-sea microbes

"The molecular study of proteins is rapidly expanding as the technology supporting the field keeps advancing," says Vincent Conticello. "You're only limited by your interest and your imagination." (Photo by Carol Clark)

The microbe Pyrodictium abyssi is an archaeaon — a member of what’s known as the third domain of life — and an extremophile. It lives in deep-sea thermal vents, at temperatures above the boiling point of water, without light or oxygen, withstanding the enormous pressure at ocean depths of thousands of meters. 

A biomatrix of tiny tubes of protein, known as cannulae, link cells of Pyrodictium abyssi together into a highly stable microbial community. No one knew how these single-celled microbes accomplished this feat of extreme engineering — until now. 

A study using advanced microscopy techniques reveals new details about the elegant design of the cannulae and the remarkable simplicity of their method of construction. Nature Communications published the work, led by scientists at Emory University; the University of Virginia, Charlottesville; and Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. 

The discovery holds the potential to inspire innovations in biotechnology, from the development of new “smart” materials to nanoscale drug delivery systems. 

“Not only are the cannulae strong enough to endure extreme conditions, they’re beautiful,” says Vincent Conticello, Emory professor of chemistry and co-senior author of the paper. “To me, they resemble columns from the classical architecture of ancient Greece or Rome,” he adds, citing their fluted edges and precise regularity.

Read the full story here.

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Electric charge connects jumping worm to prey

A tiny worm that leaps high into the air — up to 25 times its body length — to attach to flying insects uses static electricity to perform this astounding feat, scientists have found. The journal PNAS published the work on the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae, a parasitic roundworm, led by researchers at Emory University and the University of California, Berkeley. 

“We’ve identified the electrostatic mechanism this worm uses to hit its target, and we’ve shown the importance of this mechanism for the worm’s survival,” says co-author Justin Burton, an Emory professor of physics whose lab led the mathematical analyses of laboratory experiments. “Higher voltage, combined with a tiny breath of wind, greatly boosts the odds of a jumping worm connecting to a flying insect.” 

“You might expect to find big discoveries in big animals, but the tiny ones also hold a lot of interesting secrets,” adds Victor Ortega-Jiménez, co-lead author and assistant professor of biomechanics at the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted the experiments, including the use of highspeed microscopy techniques to film the parasitic worm — whose length is about the diameter of a needle point — as it leaped onto electrically charged fruit flies. 

The researchers showed how a charge of a few hundred volts, similar to that generated by an insect’s wings beating the air, initiates an opposite charge in the worm, creating an attractive force. They identified electrostatic induction as the charging mechanism driving this process.

Read the full story here.

New Method to Control Dengue Mosquito Shows Public Health Benefit

In advance of the rainy season, local public health officials sprayed a long-lasting insecticide, safe for indoor use, targeted to areas where the Aedes mosquito prefers to hang out.

A novel disease prevention strategy — targeting a mosquito that spreads the dengue virus — significantly reduces both the mosquito numbers and cases of disease across a community, finds a major new study. New England Journal of Medicine published the results of the large, randomized clinical trial — considered the gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention — led by Emory University. 

The research was conducted in Merida, a city of one million in the Mexican state of the Yucatan, through a close collaboration with the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, the Yucatan Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry of Health of Mexico. 

The project tested an intervention that previous Emory research found promising: Targeted indoor residual spraying of insecticide, or TIRS, conducted before an outbreak occurs. The method is aimed at a particular species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti, that is perfectly adapted to live with humans in an urban setting. 

“Our study showed that the TIRS method reduced numbers of these mosquitos by 6o percent for a period of six months,” says Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, senior author of the study and Emory professor of environmental sciences. “The results also quantified a 24 percent mean reduction community-wide in cases of dengue fever, even in the context of a record-breaking outbreak of dengue in Merida.”

Read the full story here.

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New methods expand access to molecules key to human health

"I love solving problems, the more challenging the better," says San Pham, first author of the paper. Senior author is Frank McDonald, Emory professor of chemistry and Pham's PhD advisor.

A new approach to an established reaction boosts the ability to synthesize vinylic ethers — key building blocks for many molecules that are important to human health. The American Chemical Society’s Organic Letters published the breakthrough, made by chemists at Emory University. 

“Our method is easy to reproduce and is based on widely available and inexpensive compounds,” says San Pham, an Emory PhD candidate and first author of the paper. “We can apply this method to make multiple natural products, including novel vinylic ethers.” 

Her research improves the reliability, yield and generality of what is known as the Chan-Evans-Lam reaction. These enhancements greatly expand the reaction’s potential for the synthesis of complex, biologically active compounds for drug research.

Read the full story here.

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Evolving views: A new look at the Scopes Trial

Emory professor of psychology Harold Gouzoules, left, and his son Alexander Gouzoules, an Emory alum who is a legal scholar.

A combination of inherited genes and life experiences led Alexander Gouzoules (a legal scholar) and his father, Harold Gouzoules (an evolutionary biologist), to co-author a book about the 1925 Scopes trial. 

“The Hundred Years’ Trial: Law, Evolution, and the Long Shadow of Scopes v. Tennessee” blends their expertise. Johns Hopkins University Press published the book, marking the centenary of the fierce, public legal battle over the right to teach evolution in a Tennessee high school. 

“We had the ideal meshing of interests to take on the topic in a new way,” says Harold Gouzoules, an Emory professor of psychology who studies the evolution of primate social behavior. “I took on the science and Alex covered the legal ramifications of the trial.”

Read the full story here.

Children as young as five can navigate a 'Tiny Town'

A playground scene in Tiny Town. (Dilks lab)

Many behavioral studies suggest that using landmarks to navigate through large-scale spaces — known as map-based navigation — is not established until around age 12. 

A neuroscience study at Emory University counters that assumption. Through experiments combining brain scans and a virtual environment the researchers dubbed Tiny Town, they showed that five-year-olds have the brain system that supports map-based navigation. 

The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the finding, the first neural evidence that this cognitive ability is in place in such young children. 

“While large-scale navigation abilities certainly continue to develop throughout childhood, our findings show that the underlying neural system is established remarkably early,” says Yaelan Jung, first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Emory’s Department of Psychology. 

“Rather than taking a decade or more, map-based navigation is underway in half that time,” adds Daniel Dilks, associate professor of psychology and senior author of the study. “Five-year-olds have the brain system enabling them to find their way around a tiny, virtual town. They not only know that the ice cream store in the mountain region is different than the ice cream store in the lake region, they know how to navigate the streets to get to each of them.”

Read the full story here.

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Developing a new approach to control a dangerous, invasive mosquito in Ethiopia

Edilawit Mesfine, left, and Edel Seifu, both from Jigjiga University, collect data and larvae from a construction site. (Photo by Kim Awbrey)

Emory University received $2.8 million in funding from the Gates Foundation to support its work to develop and test a high-tech, low-cost method to control an invasive mosquito that poses a growing threat of urban malaria in Africa. The three-year project is focused on three cities in Ethiopia: Jigjiga, Semera and Logiya. 

The project’s novel approach to combating malaria combines on-the-ground knowledge of human and mosquito behaviors with detailed environmental imagery from drones and NASA satellites. Machine learning techniques will be applied to the data to develop a model — powered by artificial intelligence — for targeted public health interventions. 

The aim is to efficiently control populations of the invasive Anopheles stephensi mosquito by first, identifying water sources that are most likely to harbor the larvae during the dry season. And secondly, by sharing maps of these precise targets with local public health authorities — via a mobile phone app — to guide their larvae-eradication efforts in the most efficient and effective manner. 

The strategy is based on research on the ecology of stephensi in Jigjiga led by Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, Emory professor of environmental sciences and co-principal investigator for the grant. “It sounds counterintuitive to focus mosquito-control efforts on the dry season,” Vazquez-Prokopec says. “Our research, however, shows that the dry season offers a perfect window of opportunity to cost-effectively control these mosquitoes.” 

Vazquez-Prokopec is an expert on the disease ecology of pathogens spread by vectors, such as mosquitoes. His research considers environmental factors as well as the interactions of mosquitoes, the pathogens they carry, and people. 

Read the full story here.

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A new clue to how multicellular life may have evolved

The idea for the work came from watching the filter feeding of stentors — trumpet-shaped, single-celled giants that float near the surface of ponds. (Getty Images)

Life emerged on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago. The “primordial soup theory” proposes that chemicals floating in pools of water, in the presence of sunlight and electrical discharge, spontaneously formed organic molecules. These building blocks of life underwent chemical reactions, likely driven by RNA, eventually leading to the formation of single cells. 

But what sparked single cells to assemble into more complex, multicellular life forms? 

Nature Physics published a new insight about a possible driver of this key step in evolution — the fluid dynamics of cooperative feeding. 

“So much work on the origins of multicellular life focuses on chemistry,” says Shashank Shekhar, lead author of the study and assistant professor of physics at Emory University. “We wanted to investigate the role of physical forces in the process.” 

Shekhar got the idea while watching the filter feeding of stentors — trumpet-shaped, single-celled giants that float near the surface of ponds. Through microscope video, he captured the fluid dynamics of a stentor in a liquid-filled lab dish as the organism sucked in particles suspended in the liquid. He also recorded the fluid dynamics of pairs and groups of stentors clumped together and feeding. 

The videos revealed a world similar to how Van Gogh saw the night sky, swirling with stars. 

“The project started with beautiful images of the fluid flows,” Shekhar says. “Only later did we realize the evolutionary significance of this behavior.”

Read the full story by clicking here.

'Doctors by Nature': In a new book, a biologist explores how animals heal themselves

Emory biologist Jaap de Roode with his two dogs, Tukkie and Cooper.

In 2010, Emory University biologist Jaap de Roode published the discovery that monarch butterflies use medicine to cure their offspring of disease. His lab revealed how, if infected with a parasite, the female butterflies prefer to lay their eggs on a species of milkweed containing higher levels of a toxic chemical. The caterpillars eat the milkweed, ingest the toxin, and reduce the parasite load in their bodies. 

With that finding, de Roode joined the vanguard of scientists uncovering how animals treat themselves for diseases. 

“We showed how even an insect with a teeny-tiny brain can medicate,” de Roode says. “From there it was a natural progression to the understanding that, in principle, any animal can do it.” 

In his new book, “Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes and Other Animals Heal Themselves,” de Roode explores the growing field of animal self-medication. He interviews scientists around the globe and describes research into how animals from ants to apes, birds to bears — even family dogs and cats — use various forms of medicine.

Read more about de Roode's book.

Atlanta Science Festival set to entertain, inspire and engage all ages

The festival culminates Saturday, March 22, in "Exploration Expo," a day-long celebration in Piedmont Park. Demonstrations by Emory chemist Douglas Mulford are among the perennial favorites.

By Carol Clark

Atlanta Science Festival returns March 8-22, with more than 100 events throughout the metro area, inviting the public to join fun, interactive and educational experiences. The acclaimed city-wide celebration, one of the largest of its kind in the country, showcases the myriad science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) innovations happening in Atlanta, including at Emory. 

“Not only does the Atlanta Science Festival spotlight the wonder of science in its various forms, we strive to do so by curating a two-week experience that’s as exciting and intriguing as possible,” says Meisa Salaita, executive co-director of Science ATL, the non-profit organization that engineers the festival. “We want to open minds, educate, inspire, entertain, and spark the interest of the scientists of tomorrow.” 

Now in its 12th year, the Atlanta Science Festival was co-founded by Emory, Georgia Tech and the Metro Atlanta Chamber. 

Members of the Emory community will help participants experience the wonders of science through spectacles like the chemistry of fireballs, a musical entertainment combined with a biology talk on the surprising abilities of animals to use medicine, a walking tour of campus science landmarks, a behind-the-scenes look at the latest advances in healthcare technology and much more. 

Creative events to engage participants with technology include “Data Poetics,” which will combine slam poetry and computer science on Thursday, March 13 at 7 p.m. at the Supermarket event space in Atlanta. The introductory workshop in how to use software to visualize data and add power to poetic expression will be co-hosted by Emily Wall, Emory assistant professor of computer science, Keke Wu, Emory postdoctoral researcher, and W. J. Lofton, an Atlanta poet. 

The idea for the event grew out of an Emory class that Wall and Lofton co-taught as part of the Emory Arts and Social Justice Fellows program, which pairs faculty with local artists to explore how creative thinking and artistic expression can inspire change. Their class was so successful that the duo wanted to introduce the concept to the wider public. 

Participants will write a data-driven poem about a social issue affecting Atlanta and then amplify their message through information visualizations. “Many people think of computer science as intimidating and too ‘mathy’ to be interesting,” Wall says. 

That attitude often changes when people learn simple ways to directly apply computer science to better communicate a human problem, she adds. “We want to give artists another tool, a way to make their art even more compelling.”

Click here for highlights of more festival events featuring members of the Emory community.

Celebrating Valentine's Day and science

Emory biophysicists Jennifer Rieser and Gordon Berman enjoy a hike in Aspen following a summer conference.

Jennifer Rieser, assistant professor of physics, and Gordon Berman, associate professor of biology, connected at Cornell University in 2006. They are fascinated by the biophysics of animal behaviors, tackling esoteric questions such as variations in how organisms move. 

“We both noticed each other,” Berman recalls of their first meeting. Berman was already working on his PhD, studying the biodynamics of insect flight, when Rieser attended a recruitment weekend for graduate students. 

“I reached out to him afterwards to learn more about what it’s like at Cornell,” Rieser says. 

Berman didn’t discourage her. She was enrolled that fall, and, by Christmas, Berman informed his mother he had a girlfriend. 

They married in 2010. Their eventual move to Atlanta was a homecoming for Rieser, who grew up in nearby Lawrenceville, while Berman is from Michigan. 

During the COVID-19 lockdown they shared a Midtown loft, teaching online on opposite sides of the space, sometimes simultaneously. “And we didn’t get tired of each other,” Berman says. “We survived that test.” 

They now live just a few blocks from campus with daughter, Naomi, who is two-and-a-half, and dogs Escher and Kona. 

Berman focuses more on theoretical and computational methods, while Rieser takes an experimental approach to the locomotion of everything from snakes to ants. They often run their research by one another to get feedback from their complementary strengths. 

They manage to combine work and play, traveling together following conferences or summer teaching gigs that took them to Brazil, Italy and Germany. And they enjoy cooking and eating nice meals. 

“I tend to bake things,” Rieser says. 

“She’s more a creature of precision,” Berman explains. “Her signature dish is a chocolate babka, a very decadent bread.” 

"He’s more of an improvisational chef,” Rieser says. 

“Give me a cabinet of ingredients and a couple of adjectives,” Berman says, “and I can make you a bespoke, likely unrepeatable cocktail.”

Read more stories of Emory scientific power couples.

Plant extract inspires new chemistry and new early lead against triple-negative breast cancer

The extract that inspired the research comes from Curcuma phaeocaulis, a flowering plant in the ginger family. (Wagner Campelo / Alamy Stock Photo)

Chemists at Emory University invented a reaction to streamline the total synthesis of a compound, phaeocaulisin A, extracted from a plant used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine. 

In laboratory dish experiments conducted with biologists at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, the researchers showed the compound’s efficacy against HER2-positive breast cancer cells and triple-negative breast cancer cells. An analogue of the compound the chemists constructed boosted this efficacy. 

“We not only efficiently replicated a complex natural product,” says Mingji Dai, Emory professor of chemistry. “We also improved upon it by turning it into a more potent compound.” 

The Journal of the American Chemical Society published the work, led by Dai and Yong Wan, professor of pharmacology and chemical biology at Emory School of Medicine and director of basic research for the Glenn Family Breast Center at Winship Cancer Institute.

Read the full story here.

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Bittersweet secrets of the fruit fly brain

Fruit flies have served as an important laboratory organism for more than 100 years. (Sanjay Archaya/Wikipedia)

The sense of taste carries evolutionary benefits key to survival. A sweet taste, for instance, signals energy-dense nutrients important to animals foraging for food — including humans. A bitter taste may warn of a toxic substance. 

“We use our sense of taste to decide what to eat and how much to eat,” says Anita Devineni, a neuroscientist and assistant professor in Emory University’s Department of Biology. 

Despite the importance of taste, little is known about how taste cues spark the firing of cells across a brain and evoke a variety of behavioral responses. Devineni is exploring this mystery by mapping the neural circuitry for the taste system of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. 

Tinier than a poppy seed, the fruit fly brain contains around 140,000 neurons. 

“That’s 1,000 fewer neurons than a mouse brain and a million times fewer than a human brain,” Devineni explains, making the fly brain a simple starting point for studying general mechanistic principles of cognition. 

Compared to the incredible complexity of its cognitive powers, the human brain’s basic biology appears relatively straightforward. 

“The brain is just an organ like any other organ in your body,” Devineni says. “It’s made up of neurons that are cells like any other cells — lipid membranes containing proteins, DNA and other molecules. What makes a brain cell different from a skin cell or a lung cell is that a brain cell fires. Firing means that sodium ions flow in and out of the cell. Everything that you do, from thinking to talking to walking, is a result of patterns of neurons firing. How could this be?”

Read the full story here.

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High temperatures dampen immune systems of wild capuchins

A capuchin mother carries a baby on her back. The study found that the immune systems of juveniles were most impacted by high temperatures. (Capuchins de Taboga)

High temperatures lower the immune performance of wild capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica, especially in young individuals, finds a new study published by Science Advances. The work, led by scientists at Emory University and the University of Michigan, provides some of the first data on the relationship between the immune system and ambient temperature in a wild mammal. 

“Capuchin monkeys are super intelligent, highly adaptive primates that do well in diverse ecosystems,” says Marcela Benítez, Emory assistant professor of anthropology and co-senior author of the paper. “The fact that we’re seeing their immune responses affected by high temperatures suggests that many mammalian species that are less adaptive may be experiencing even worse effects as average temperatures warm globally.” 

Read the full story.

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A snapshot of scientific thought on emotions in animals

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A snapshot of scientific thought on emotions in animals

Wild capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica where Emory anthropologist Marcela Benítez is studying their social behaviors. (Capuchinos de Taboga)

The journal Royal Society Open Science published a survey of 100 researchers of animal behavior, providing a unique view of current scientific thought on animal emotions and consciousness. 

“As far as we know, this is the first assessment of how animal behavior researchers across a range of disciplines think about emotions and consciousness in non-human animals,” says Marcela Benítez, assistant professor of anthropology at Emory University and corresponding author of the paper. “It gives us a snapshot in time so that 20 years from now, we can revisit how scientific experts may have changed their views.” 

A majority of the survey respondents ascribed emotions to “most” or “all or nearly all” non-human primates (98%), other mammals (89%), birds (78%), octopus, squids and cuttlefish (72%) and fish (53%). And most of the respondents ascribed emotions to at least some members of each taxonomic group of animals considered, including insects (67%) and other invertebrates (71%). 

The survey also included questions about the risks in animal behavioral research of anthropomorphism (inaccurately projecting human experience onto animals) and anthropodenial (willful blindness to any human characteristics of animals). 

“It’s surprising that 89% of the respondents thought that anthropodenial was problematic in animal behavioral research, compared to only 49% who thought anthropomorphism poses a risk,” Benítez says. “That seems like a big shift.” 

Anthropomorphism, she notes, has long been a leading argument against those who attributed feelings to animals.

Read the full story by clicking here.

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