Hot MedFax

Recently a friend I've known (and been competitive with for years) moved to a more affluent town, with a much better high school than the one my son goes to.  Another friend got a snazzy new convertible. My work contract ended at about the same time.  There's no new one on the horizon.  And I admit it.  I was jealous. Now scientists are finding that jealousy can lead to, yes, you heard it here first.  Spite.     Studying monkeys, they've found that their reaction to those who have more is exactly that.  Monkeys, like humans, will take the time and effort to punish others who get more than their fair share, according to a study conducted at Yale. In fact, they can act downright spiteful. Capuchin monkeys will yank on a rope to collapse a table that is holding a partner monkey’s food. While chimpanzees collapse their partner’s table only after direct personal affronts like theft, capuchins punish more often, even in cases whe...

The other night I was watching a bear rip the flesh off another bear and it was pretty awful.  Turns out the male bear wanted to mate with a female bear but she was fending him off while another female bear cozied up to him. The female bear he wanted got mad at the other female, so she charged her, and when the male bear got wind of this, he killed the other female.  Then the first female decided to mate with him.  Guess she likes her bears manly. Oy. None of that seemed fair to me.  Yet a new study has found that h umans aren’t the only species to react strongly to actions they consider unfair. A similar drive for fairness in monkeys and some dogs has been observed, newswise.com reports. Notice, they don't say bears. Domestic dogs are more concerned with the quantity of treats doled out by a trainer than whether the trainer distributes them fairly, according to Alexandra Horowitz, PhD, of Barnard College. In her study,  dogs had to select a “fair” or “u...

Quick.  What happens when you see someone yawn ?  Chances are, you'll yawn, too. Studies in the past suggested it was because we felt empathy for the person doing the yawning.  But a new one that's just out says that's really not the case. Contagious yawning occurs not only in humans, but also in chimpanzees and other animals, in response to hearing about, seeing or thinking about yawning. In 2013,  Medical News Today (MNT)  reported on a study in dogs, which suggested that the  contagious yawns dogs get from their owners  are a result of empathy rather than  stress , according to the publication. Researchers say this phenomenon "differs from spontaneous yawning, in that it does not occur merely when someone is tired or bored. While spontaneous yawning is observed in the womb, contagious yawning begins in early childhood," MNT reports. And though yawning seems like a trivial human action, by better understanding the biological mechanis...