I know firsthand what a hydroelectric dam can do to the environment. As a tribal member growing up on the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s reservation, the Elwha River and its two hydroelectric…

Is consciousness an instinct?When feeling at sea about definitions and meanings in the mind/brain business, it is always rewarding to dial up William James once again.William JamesMore…

The importance of being playful is evident in how ancient the behavior is.Photograph by U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Jannelle McRaeLast year, more than 111 million people—about a…

Chris Perry had felt the world bobbing beneath her feet for nearly four months, suffering from a disorder rather poetically dubbed Mal de Debarquement syndrome.Photograph by Zvonimir…

Dead animals were scattered across the steppe in front of us. Up to the horizon. Thousands of them. That was the moment we understood that we were observing a mass mortality of catastrophic…

I have long been interested in human affect—the world of emotions and feelings—and have spent many years investigating it: why and how we emote, feel, use feelings to construct…

The best way to draw the line sounds less biological than poetic: What separates us is the “difference between staying and going,” as Hope Jahren, the geochemist and geobiologist,…

On the morning of Friday Aug. 6, 1852, Alfred Russel Wallace was summoned to the deck of the brig Helen. The boat was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and Wallace had already been…

CRISPR’s not on the cusp of anything.WikicommonsHow many diseases could humans treat if the DNA in troublesome cells could be edited within the body? Half? Most? How about “absolutely…

It’s possible that sensing the presence of a female may effectively activate processes involved in reproduction, which might facilitate a male’s reproductive success if…