Basking sharks will break you. That’s an unfortunate lesson that’s been learned the hard way for centuries, among fishermen and researchers alike. It’s probably not for the reasons you imagine, because these are not your average sharks (although it is my duty as a shark biologist and conservationist to inform that you have more of…

For the last 10 months or so, not a single day has gone by where I haven’t spent some amount of time thinking about honey bees, reading about honey bees, working with honey bees, or listing off cool honey bee facts to anyone willing to listen.  If you’ve been following the blog in recent months, […]

Sarah McKay Strobel, a PhD researcher at University of California Santa Cruz, highlights the world according to sea otters and how it’s not just about knowing your study species, but knowing the individual animals as well.

For the last five years, I have studied the effects of human-induced land change on species interactions and behavior in freshwater streams in the Northern Range Mountains of Trinidad. As I put the finishing touches on my dissertation, this my first summer in four years when I’m not in the Northern Range Mountains of Trinidad…

Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) are weird alien-birds that are emblematic of North America’s western states. They live in the sagebrush steppes: a unique and harsh desert whose beauty belies the harsh conditions that animals face. My research is broadly focused on sage-grouse behavior and conservation. My project is two-pronged: I investigate the link between behavior…

Learn how UC Davis researchers track migrating salmon in the Central Valley in this month’s Field Notes.

ABGG first-year Karli Chudeau explains what enrichment is and why it’s important to consider in wildlife rehabilitation settings.

ABGG first-year Meredith Lutz discusses her research on sifaka play behavior in the eastern rainforests of Madagascar.

Field Notes is a monthly segment in which we (the students of the Animal Behavior Graduate Group) recount the scientific side of our fieldwork – why we are there, what we do when we get there, and what we learned from our time. Stay tuned each month as we travel the globe studying a variety…

I’m finally back after a summer field season studying monkeys in Japan! My research was conducted on Koshima Island, the birthplace of Japanese Primatology and home to a population of almost 100 Japanese macaques. You may have heard of