At least that’s how University of Florida researchers interpret the results of new research on the mating habits and nervous systems of prairie voles. An article about the research, which examined both the voles’ behavior and their brains, appears in this week’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

How many times a day do you grab objects such as a pencil or a cup? We perform these tasks without thinking, however the motor planning necessary to grasp an object is quite complex.

An international team of scientists has overturned an ecological study on how some animals search for food. Previously it was believed that wandering albatrosses and other species forage using a Lévy flight strategy - a cluster of short moves connected by infrequent longer ones. Published this week in the journal Nature, the team discovered that further analyses and new data tell a different story for the albatrosses and possibly for other species too.

New research from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany shows that unlike humans, chimpanzees conform to traditional economic models. The research, conducted by Keith Jensen, Josep Call and Michael Tomasello, used a modification of one of the most widely used and accepted economic tools, the ultimatum game.

They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and the same could be said for female chimpanzees. Researchers studying wild chimps in West Africa have discovered that males pinch desirable fruits from local farms and orchards as a means of attracting female mates.

For mice, carbon dioxide often means danger - too many animals breathing in too small a space or a hungry predator exhaling nearby. Mice have a way of detecting carbon dioxide, and new research from Rockefeller University shows that a special set of olfactory neurons is involved, a finding that may have implications for how predicted increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide may affect animal behavior.

New technology has allowed an international team including UK scientists from University of St Andrews and British Antarctic Survey to witness for the first time the behaviour of the southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) and how it relates to its physical environment.