Barbara J. King
Barbara J. King is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. She is a Chancellor Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary. With a long-standing research interest in primate behavior and human evolution, King has studied baboon foraging in Kenya and gorilla and bonobo communication at captive facilities in the United States.
Recently, she has taken up writing about animal emotion and cognition more broadly, including in bison, farm animals, elephants and domestic pets, as well as primates.
King's most recent book is How Animals Grieve (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Her article "When Animals Mourn" in the July 2013 Scientific American has been chosen for inclusion in the 2014 anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing. King reviews non-fiction for the Times Literary Supplement (London) and is at work on a new book about the choices we make in eating other animals. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work in 2002.
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Is it necessary coddling or just good science to give college students breaks to check their phones? Anthropologist Barbara J. King takes a look.
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When it comes to finding and preparing food, we're a continually inventive species. Anthropologist Barbara J. King asks: What are the food trends of the future?
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Think twice before crushing that spider that startles you. Its little brain may be up to some pretty fascinating things, says anthropologist Barbara J. King.
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As Minor League Baseball teams take the field this summer, cowboy monkey rodeos shouldn't be invited along as "entertainment," says anthropologist Barbara J. King.
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Anthropologist Barbara J. King explores links between global warming and migratory bird behavior as new research on white storks reveals some are wintering closer to home.
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Barbara J. King, a professor emerita of anthropology at William and Mary, discusses whether Neanderthals had "religious capacity."
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Life close to the land is filmed with love in The Seer: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, a documentary about the writer and activist premiering today at SXSW. Anthropologist Barbara J. King takes a look.
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Elephants display a striking ability to hear distant thunderstorms, says anthropologist Barbara J. King. She suggests watching a video that caught some elephants reacting on film.
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A new essay argues we've gone too far in pushing breast-feeding on American mothers. Anthropologist Barbara J. King explores the data on breast-feeding's benefits.
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As a new paper describes the planning skills of a drone-smashing chimpanzee whose video went viral, anthropologist Barbara J. King considers the risks and benefits of drones flying through our world.