I'll look it up - thanks for the rec!

No I haven't - you recommend it?

Well no - not as conscious as we are. I don't believe that. But I do definitely play down my thoughts on their capacity in order not to panic the old crowd. In another fifteen years I'm sure there will graduates pushing my boundaries!

If you are referring to this report, you have misunderstood.

I believe far more in (some) animal sentience, understanding and social abilities than I will ever, ever admit to in an academic setting.

No, 'groupthink' is a fictional word. 'Consensus' has a long history the language.

Dude 'Britons' come from 'Britain'

Oh yeah, we also invented language as well as everything else. Did we not mention that? You're welcome!

Thank you for the advice, but I have already found this out!

I'm LadyJillybean. Geek, gamer, would-be writer. In the real world I have recently completed my doctorate in evolutionary biology, more specifically in the field of animal individual behavioural variation (or personality, if you will).

I LOVE this. I'm going to post it in the office.

I've had flu and never been vaccinated - go figure!

I was referring to feral domestics, sorry. African wild dogs and dingos are different yet again. There's no such thing as a 'wild type dog' anymore. Their closest ancestor was the wolf - but the wolf we see today are the wolves who chose NOT to be domesticated and so aren't comparable.

They behave more like domestic dogs - dogs have a very different behavioural repetoire from wolves. There's a great paper by Goodwin et al 97 about how selective breeding in dogs has changed their visual signals and methods of communication.

I'd suggest (without having read the paper yet) it's because dogs are more capable of interpreting human body language. The wolves may not have recognised the threat to the same degree.

Oooh me too! I have an Assassin's Creed hoodie (Desmond style) and a N7 and Kaidan hoodie. The AC one is fairly inconspicuous, the Mass Effect ones slightly less so. I love geeky wardrobe items that fit into my life!

I'm not convinced 'personifies' is the word you were looking for - doesn't that mean he takes on attributes of the plant? Whereas 'anthropomorphise' would mean he's putting human attributes on the plant.

Whereas the lion looks like he's *this* close to killing everyone

Sorry, Ms Armstrong can do no wrong in my book!

So very excited about this - Women of the Underworld is one of my favourite trashy novel series and 'Bitten' is undeniably brilliant.