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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We schedule our work and leisure dates, why not the birth dates of our babies? Anthropologist Barbara J. King looks at this trend in evolutionary perspective. -
Sometimes our loved ones who suffer from dementia surprise us — and teach us new lessons, as commentator Barbara J. King found out this week. -
Anthropologist Barbara J. King says the cross-cultural norm for sleep deviates significantly from the long, uninterrupted night of rest insomniacs may dream about — if they can sleep enough to dream. -
Scientists have known for 50 years that taking baby monkeys from their mothers causes them trauma. Commentator Barbara J. King asks why the practice continues today.
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Commentator Barbara J. King digs into whether there's merit to fears of contracting the virus in the U.S. — and into humans' natural tendency, under certain circumstances, to panic.
