Animal Life

Human-animal relationships: from daily life to animal-assisted therapies.

Humans have a long history of relationship with domestic animals and nowadays pets often act as "social substitutes" through bonding. There is some evidence that pet presence at home may induce well being in people and the development of social skills in children. Animal assisted therapies aim at developing these skills in patients on the basis of human animal interactions. Experimental data ob...

On the Irreplaceability of Animal Life

As animal rights becomes a fash­­ ionable topic of debate within the aca­­ demic community, we see a spate of arguments emerging which deny or conflict with the fundamental moral principles of equal consideration of interests. 1 Whatever the motivation for such arguments, the practical result is the putative justification of the continued use, abuse, and slaughter of non-human animals for man's...

Developmental plasticity and the evolution of animal complex life cycles.

Metazoan life cycles can be complex in different ways. A number of diverse phenotypes and reproductive events can sequentially occur along the cycle, and at certain stages a variety of developmental and reproductive options can be available to the animal, the choice among which depends on a combination of organismal and environmental conditions. We hypothesize that a diversity of phenotypes arr...

Earth's oxygen cycle and the evolution of animal life.

The emergence and expansion of complex eukaryotic life on Earth is linked at a basic level to the secular evolution of surface oxygen levels. However, the role that planetary redox evolution has played in controlling the timing of metazoan (animal) emergence and diversification, if any, has been intensely debated. Discussion has gravitated toward threshold levels of environmental free oxygen (O...

A Basin Redox Transect at the Dawn of Animal Life