Exploring Animal Behavior: Readings from American Scientist

Rating:
Summary: great reading for an undergraduate student
Review: As a third year university studentm, I read this text as supplementary reading for our Animal Behaviour undergraduate course last semester. Throughout the duration of the course I was suitably impressed with the presentation of the material in the class (particularly due to the notable performances of the two profs teaching it) but found that this text was a truly engaging read that helped round out my learning experience.

While it does not follow the structure of a true scientific report, we do keep in mind that it is composed of excerpts from a scientific magazine that also caters towards the laypeople (i.e. those who have no major scientific background), just like Scientific American and Wildlife Conservation (although both those magazines are even more general than the American Scientist!). I found this to be one of the best supplementary texts that we have been given at the university so far, due to the scope of interesting topics presented, from canid domestication to prairie-vole partnerships to human mating strategies. As many of my other classmates, I read the rest of the book (as well as parts of the other assigned textbook) without the necessity of our profs assigning readings, growing more and more attached to the amazingly captivating field of ethology.

As I mentioned before, this text is not written in the format of a scientific journal, but it still educates and inspires readers of our generation to investigate the issues discussed further in depth (even during our spare time) by using those aforementioned scientific journals to glean valuable insight into actual experimental methods. Excellent!

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat stimulating collection of articles on behaviour
Review: This collection of journal articles assembled by Sherman and Alcock is somewhat thought prevoking. Unfortunately that is where it ends. Most of the articles are subjective in nature and often lack any real scientific structure (e.g., no data, unclear methods, etc.) If, however, you enjoy a good biological debate, this book contains many articles which argue various points of view (with various degrees of ability) on subjects such as sociobiology, coevolution, and behavioural genetics.