The study of animal personalities is rapidly become one of the fastest growing areas of research in behavioural biology and ecology. The term ‘personality’, within this context, is used to describe significant behavioural and physiological differences between individuals of the same species, which are consistent over time in different contexts or situations. For field researchers,…

Consciousness is often perceived as an ethereal notion which is difficult to pin down. However, finally, a group of eminent scientists meeting to discuss the neurobiological basis of conscious experience and related behaviours agreed that: “Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity…

In the post festive haze, as we wade through the sea of discarded Christmas presents, it is hard not to recognise that one of the things that sets us humans apart from many other species (but perhaps not quite all species), is our relationship with ‘stuff’. We make it, we buy it, we collect it, we…