BIO 105 D STRANGE APES: THE BIOLOGY OF HUMAN BEHAVIO

From simple reflexes like yawning to complex responses like affection, humans respond to their environment via a multitude of behaviors. Are these behaviors uniquely human, or do they instead connect us to a distant evolutionary past? The behaviors we perform are shaped by our hormones, our nervous system, our anatomy, and our evolution. In this class, we will use a few of these biological lenses to investigate the basis for behaviors like aggression, altruism, envy, and compassion. Ultimately, our goal is to discover the aspects of our biology that link us to our evolutionary history and consider the biological basis of those features that make us uniquely human.