General Science

• naturalSCIENCE: Science Related Web Links  -  General science articles and current events in science.
• Nerd World : SCIENCES  -  General science links.
• The New York Times: Science  -  Timely science in the news.
• Tree of Life Search - Search for an organism and learn about its evolutionary relationships

General Animal Behavior, Communication, Navigation, and Sensory Perception

• Signaling Theory and Animal Communication  -  An on-line seminar
• Enquist lab  -  A lab that studies animal communication
• Animal Behavior Resources on the Internet  -  Includes many relevant links.
• Animal Behavior  -  A site developed to familiarize students with the landmarks in the study of animal behavior, including major researcher, classic experiments, historic debates, and links to supplemental materials.
• Internet Animal Behavior  -  This site provides links regarding animal behavior information, professional societies, and journals.
• Animal behavior  -  Links to many animal behavior sites.
• Scientific American Frontiers presents Animal Einsteins  -  How intelligent are animals? The Scientific American Frontiers special Animal Einsteins explores this very question, including the ability of several animals to use language.  Site has links to each researcher featured on the show.
• Introduction to Linguistics: Animal Communication Resources  -  Includes links on a variety of animal communication subjects, including the use of language in bees, parrots, primates, and cetaceans.

Dr. Dolittle and friends....

• Communication with Parrots - work of Dr. Irene Pepperberg and Alex, a Congo African Grey Parrot.
• Evolution of Communication - Ongoing research projects using computer animation playbacks to study mate choice in several species of fish.
• The Evolution of Communication  -  Draft paper on communication by Jason Noble of the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex.
• I buzz therefore I think  -  Why do so many researchers prefer to believe that animals are more like sleepwalkers than thinking creatures?

Animal Navigation examples

• The Albatross Project - join scientists using sensitive satellites in space, miniature transmitters on birds, and rapid email communications to investigate the travels of albatrosses on the open ocean.
• Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig - sixteen true stories of lost pets who overcame incredible odds before finding their way back to the loving arms of their faithful owners.
• Ants:  Project Sahabot   -  Describes Dimirious Lambrinos' work on a robot ant using a polarised light compass in the Tunisian desert  his paper can be found at "An autonomous polarised ... " .
• Crickets: Barbara Webb's Home Page  -  contains info on her work on developing a "cricket" robot.
• Animals and Robots Group  -  Simulation of insectan navigation

Sensory Modalities

Vision

• Visual Psychophysics Lab Wolfelab  -   This very colorful site contains visual psychophysical tests, very useful links to other psychophysics labs and groups, as well as to vision/ophthalmology sites and institutions.
• Blind spots  -  Most people (even many who work on the brain) assume that what you see is pretty much what your eye sees and reports to your brain. In fact, your brain adds very substantially to the report it gets from your eye, so that a lot of what you see is actually "made up" by the brain.
• Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World  -  Includes many interesting articles on human sensory perception.

 

Vocal/hearing communication

• Animal Bioacoustics section of the Acoustical Society of America  -  Animal bioacoustics, often called simply bioacoustics, is the study of sound in non-human animals. Includes  animal communication and associated behavior  sound production anatomy and neurophysiology of animals auditory capacities and auditory mechanisms of animals instrumental sonar.
• Center for Bioacoustics  -  Associated with Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, research ranges from the effect of traffic noise on songbirds to the distribution of whales.  Also has a lengthy list of links to related sites.
• Université de Paris-Sud (France) - Bioacoustics Team - devoted to research in animal acoustic communication.
• World Forum for Acoustic-Ecology (WFAE)  -  Contains links to related sites and on-line research.
• Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World  -  Includes many interesting articles on human sensory perception.
• Digitally recorded Natural Sounds  -  An extensive supply of bird, insect, and other animals sounds, as well as a list of links to other sound pages.
• Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology  -  Many recordings of songs, as well as bioacoustic research and links.
• Greg Kunkel's birdsongs  -   This cheerful site contains songs form, and pictures of, blackbirds, wrens, warblers, tits, thrushes, finches, etc. The sounds can be heard and are also digitized on screen. An excellent site, which also contains some beautiful maps indicating the breeding locations for the various birds.
• The Song Post  -  The web site dedicated to the study of bird song.
• Marine Mammal Bioacoustics  -  Includes calls of many whales and dolphins.  Associated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
• Do Dolphins Use an Articulate Language? - presents research into the question of whether dolphins use a syntactical language for communication.
• Uni Halle (DE) Zoology Bioacoustics Links  -  Many links to sound archives, bioacoustic labs and societies
• Marmot Photos and Sounds  -  Archive of many calls of different species
• Acoustical Society of America - Sounds  -  Includes whales sounds and musical instruments.

Touch - vibration, anemotaxis (air flow), rheotaxis (water flow)

Echolocation /Sonar (SOund NAvigation and Ranging)

• Sonar: The World Wide Web Virtual Library  -  Includes links to sites researching biological sonar in land animals, marine animals, and sites of laboratories developing artificial Sonar/Ultrasonic Imaging Systems
• Publications of the Bat Research Laboratory  -  A list of publications on echolocation and computational models of the bat auditory system.
• New Mexico Bat Call Library -  This web site allows you to upload, download, and examine bat echolocation calls recorded using the ANABAT bat detector system.
• South-eastern Australian Bat Call Library  -  This web site allows you to download bat echolocation calls.  Echolocation calls of bats can be used to distinguish between species.
• WSL Zoology: Acoustic Bat Species Identification  -  Many articles including acoustic bat species identification, what ears do for bats, flexible bat echolocation, and hearing and hunting in red bats.

Electoreception

Electric Fish: Communication  -  This page includes pictures, video, and audio of electric fish displaying aggressive behavior and electrical "chirp" communications.

Heiligenberg Lab  -  Dr. Walter Heiligenberg ran his lab from 1974 until his sudden and tragic death in September, 1994. Walter Heiligenberg and the members of his lab studied weakly electric fish. This site provides links to publications and other electric fish sites.

Nelson Lab Home Page  -  The long-term objective of research in this laboratory is to gain an understanding of the neural mechanisms and information processing principles involved in active sensory acquisition. The  adaptive signal processing in sensory systems is studied in the electric sense of weakly electric fish.  This site also contains many data pages and links to class web sites.

N J Berman Home Page  -  This lab conducts electric fish research, and the site provides a link to a short primer for the layperson: relatively jargon-free description of research done by this research group.

Zakon Lab  -  Harold Zakon's areas of interest are developmental neurobiology and the influence of hormones on the nervous system. He studies the electrosensory system of weakly electric fish which generate and sense electric fields for orienting in the dark and for communication.

Magnetic Field Reception

Use of Magnetic Fields by Tritonia diomedea  -  Data indicates that this sea slug uses the Earth's magnetic field for navigation.

Migration and Orientation  -  Course materials for a herpetology and migration class at University of Texas.  Discusses how turtles and salamanders may use magnetic fields in their migration.

More Info - Turtle Navigation  -  Use of the Earth's magnetic field for navigation by the loggerhead turtle and other animals.

John Burt's Home Page  -  I am a graduate student studying the function and perception of bird song at Mike Beecher's Bird Behavior Lab at the University of Washington.

Scientific American: Ask the Experts: Geology  -  Answers the question "Are the Earth's magnetic poles moving? How do navigators adjust to this change?"

Smell

Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World  -  Includes many interesting articles on human sensory perception.

Odor plumes and animal navigation in turbulent water flow: A field study  -  Online research paper with figures.

Psychology of Communication - Lying

Truth, Half-Truth, and Lies: Human mechanisms for Honesty, Deception, and Hypocrisy  -  A draft treatise on the psychology, potential evolutionary basis, and mathematical modelling of deception.

The Sea Slug Forum - Mimicry - Phyllidiella, flatworms, Chromodoris  -  Many animals "lie" to potential predators my mimicking other species that are toxic or bad tasting.

Miscellaneous

Science Friday: January 5, 1996  -  Topic for Hour 2: Seven Experiments that could Change the World includes several incorporating senses, navigation, and communication, and also has references to links and books.

Bat Conservation International Top Page  -  Dispels many myths about bats and provides many links.

 

 
 
 

Created by Elizabeth Olsen Murray; background image used by permission, copyright M. Hagedorn