Chicken Behaviour and Collective Intelligence
I've just finished Robert Sapolsky's Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst. It's a massive book, covering the development of our brains and our behaviour from the moment of conception, set firmly in the context of long-run evolutionary trends. The early parts were tough going for a scientific illiterate, notwithstanding Sapolsky's breezy humour, but if you persevere there are huge numbers of plums in this rich pudding. Sapolsky's overall message is (and I quote), "It's complicated." Life, development and behaviour are all a matter of a vast number of interactions that take place in a wide variety of contexts. We may have learnt a lot, but at…
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