Barbara J. King
is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. She is a Chancellor Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary. With a long-standing research interest in primate behavior and human evolution, King has studied baboon foraging in Kenya and gorilla and bonobo communication at captive facilities in the United States.
Recently, she has taken up writing about animal emotion and cognition more broadly, including in bison, farm animals, elephants and domestic pets, as well as primates.
King's most recent book is How Animals Grieve (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Her article "When Animals Mourn" in the July 2013 Scientific American has been chosen for inclusion in the 2014 anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing. King reviews non-fiction for the Times Literary Supplement(London) and is at work on a new book about the choices we make in eating other animals. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work in 2002.
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Understanding the lives of animals can illuminate our own — and those of loved adolescents too. But authors Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers at times push cross-species links too far.
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With details at once compelling and disturbing, geographer Jacob Shell describes the lives of the elephants of mountainous Myanmar and northeastern India that haul timber or transport people.
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The beauty of Robert Macfarlane's writing, and of the natural world it describes, is immense. His words also act as a warning, ensuring a recognition of human harms to the environment.
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In his new book, primate behavior researcher Frans de Waal writes that "emotions are everywhere in the animal kingdom, from fish to birds to insects and even in brainy mollusks such as the octopus."
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For many, Afghanistan does not at first conjure up images of black bears and musk deer. But that's just what Alex Dehgan found when his team went there in hope of establishing the first national park.
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Anthropologist Barbara J. King says Hurricane Florence should lead us to look beyond the agriculture industry's loss of "inventory" and view animals as thinking, feeling — and suffering — beings. -
When it comes to finding and preparing food, we're a continually inventive species. Anthropologist Barbara J. King asks: What are the food trends of the future? -
A storm of this magnitude affects many animals. Uplifting videos show people rescuing all kinds of animals from Hurricane Harvey's floodwaters, says anthropologist Barbara J. King. -
Robots are getting lots of bad press lately, but there is also positive news on robot-human relating to be found, says anthropologist Barbara J. King. -
How good is the Trump-Pence administration's knowledge of, and engagement with, science? Anthropologist Barbara J. King offers a reality check. -
There's a science to the coordinated flight of starlings, says anthropologist Barbara J. King. Here's a video showing their patterns in the sky.
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Barbara J. King, a professor emerita of anthropology at William and Mary, discusses whether Neanderthals had "religious capacity."
