Harry Harlow

New paradigm for psychology just dropped

OR: the ideas your mother warned you about

Brainchildren

Minds are complex artifacts, partly biological and partly social; only a unified, multidisciplinary approach will yield a realistic theory of how they came i...

Taking Love Seriously: What Ancient Wisdom & Modern Psychology Say About Interconnectedness - The Great Simplification

In this episode, Nate welcomes Dr. John Churchill, a psychologist and former Buddhist monk, to explore a map of human development that runs from "first-person" perspective of the isolated self all the way to a felt, embodied sense of interdependence with the planet itself.

Parenting - Fable | Stories for everyone

Delivering the world’s best social experience with exceptional stories in service of mental wellness.

Parenting - An SMBC comic collection

A collection of comics about parenting, compiled from over 20 years of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and also from experience.

Humans Love Having Pets. Seems Like Some Other Primates Do, Too.

We aren’t the only animals that like to take care of other species. A new study finds that the roots of keeping a pet may stretch deep into our primate past.

Links between the discovery of primates and anatomical comparisons with humans, the chain of being, our place in nature, and racism

- For more than a millennium humans knew more about the internal anatomy of a single monkey species than about that of their own bodies, because Galen used monkeys to infer human anatomy, in line wit...

Alexithymia Reframed:

Understanding Autistic Emotional Architecture as Overlay, Not Fusion

The Researchers Who Want Dads-to-Be to Stop Drinking - The Atlantic

archived 17 Jul 2026 13:02:43 UTC

Human–Animal Interaction and Human Prosociality: A Meta-Analytic Review of Experimental and Correlational Studies

Pet ownership and interactions with animals confer various physiological and psychological benefits to humans. Although interactions with animals are commonplace, there is no consensus in the liter...

How to spot a psychopath: ‘It’s like the difference between a domestic cat and a wild cat’

People with persistent predatory personalities cause an inordinate amount of pain. Recently, our shared understanding of them has grown – and it could help protect us

We've Lost the Spaces That Foster Friendship

We keep offering individual fixes for loneliness while ignoring the disappearance of the spaces where adults once built real relationships.

Heterospecific social behavior in primates: insights into the evolutionary roots of pet-keeping

Primate interspecific interactions with both other primates and non-primate species range from predator–prey dynamics to affiliative behaviors such as grooming, play, and carrying. While many primates participate in interspecific associations or commensal relationships, to our knowledge interspecific social interactions have never been systematically synthesized. Here, we present the first comprehensive review of such interactions, compiling 427 cases from the literature, media sources, and a global survey of primatologists. These involved 88 primate species and 127 non-primate species (including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, malacostracans, and insects) across wild (n = 311) and captive (n = 111) contexts. The most frequent interactions occurred within or between primate families (e.g., Cercopithecidae–Cercopithecidae, Cebidae–Atelidae), though affiliative behaviors were also directed toward distantly related taxa such as dogs and birds. Play (n = 139) and grooming (n = 136) were most common. Juveniles and infants predominantly engaged in play, while adult females were more likely to groom. Adult males were less affiliative overall. Contrary to expectations, affiliative behaviors were not more often directed toward immature than adult heterospecifics. Primates were the initiators in most interactions. These findings offer new insights into the diversity and contexts of heterospecific sociality in primates and suggest that some behavioral tendencies relevant to later forms of human–animal companionship – such as caregiving, tolerance, and exploratory play – may be more widespread among primates than previously recognized.

Retraction Note: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable

Nature Human Behaviour - Retraction Note: High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable