Caught in My Web: Online Animal Behavior Resources

Image by Luc Viatour at Wikimedia.

I often receive questions from readers on how to find out more about a particular topic: How do baboon troops make decisions? Do other species have slaves? Where can I learn more about how hormones affect behavior? In addition to this site, there are many online resources out there to learn more about animal behavior. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. The Conversation is one of my all-time favorite news and information sources. It is a news website with articles on practically every topic that are written by the academic experts that study them. They have a team of editors to help with the journalistic process and writing, resulting in articles that are fascinating, understandable and incredibly informed and accurate. The Conversation launched originally in Australia in 2011. It has since launched regional versions in the UK in 2013, in the US in 2014, and in Africa in 2015. You can search by topic, and their animal behavior articles can be found here.

2. The Nature Education Knowledge Project has a number of articles covering a wide range of topics in animal behavior at basic, intermediate and advanced levels. The Nature Education Knowledge Project was a project by Scitable, a free online teaching/learning source that has high quality educational articles, videos, blogs and other resources in the sciences. Scitable is produced by the Nature Publishing Group (which also publishes journals and magazines such as Nature and Scientific American).

3. Alberto Redondo Villa from University of Córdoba in Spain has a fantastic web-TV channel on animal behavior. Check it out here.

4. Isabella Rossellini, Italian model, actress and filmmaker, has several incredible series of short (1-5 minute) videos on animal sexual behavior in which she plays a different species in each video. The original, called Green Porno, was followed by Seduce Me and Mammas. If you haven't seen it yet, it is a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon. Here is one on earthworm sex:

5. If you are interested in taking a free college-level course on the topic, The University of Melbourne offers an animal behavior course (called “Animal Behaviour”, because they’re Australian) at Coursera. Learn more about the course and the next available dates here.