The importance of grooming in human animals and the other primates.

Here are a few photos I took at the St. Louis Zoo over the past few weeks. All of these involve physical grooming by primates, three of them featuring two orangutans and one of them involving a larger group of chimpanzees. This is one of the ways these animals know who is their friend or foe. Orang Grooming Orang grooming II Orang Grooming III chimpanzees grooming We human animals groom for this same purpose, but we generally engage in verbal grooming: gossip. Using words rather than physical grooming we can connect with many more fellow humans at one time than any of those animals limited to physical grooming. I make this claim based on the work of Robin Dunbar.

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Most radiologists don’t see gorilla on lung scans

An early "inattention blindness" study demonstrated that half of the people viewing a group of students playing basketball failed to notice that a "gorilla" joined the game. In a newer study of "inattention blindness," the experimenters inserted an image of a gorilla onto the upper right corner of a lung scan. It would be quite visible to anyone looking for it. Despite this, 83% of radiologists failed to notice it. Both studies are featured here.

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Considering Cults and the Need for Meaning

Recently, I finished reading Lawrence Wright’s new book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollwood, & the Prison of Belief, about Scientology. It’s a lucid history and examination of the movement. [More . . . ]

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