Cooperation relies on shared communication systems, such as language. We can now add one of the planet’s most cooperative rodents, the naked mole-rat, to the short list of species that use vocal dialects to help identify group members. Using a combination of computer algorithms and behavioral studies, we recently identified some of the special features of naked mole-rat communication.

Despite unprecedented access to multiple sources of information, polarization in political opinions is on the rise. Why does the same news footage trigger different responses in conservatives and in liberals? Analyzing the brain activity of partisans watching the news, we showed that the same information fosters different responses in their brain.

Animals navigate around their home using a variety of strategies. The most advanced one uses a "cognitive map": having spatial memory of places relative to each other, the animal computes the direction to any previously-visited location from anywhere in its home range. We have shown that fruit bats seem to do exactly that, flying in long, exceptionally straight paths between any two locations.