Writings and Reflections

Academic papers, popular articles, blogs, and reflections are continually added and updated.

Welcome to a growing collection of my writings—ranging from blogs and strøtanker (“scattered thoughts”)* to in-depth scholarly papers. The topics vary widely, reflecting my lifelong curiosity about behavior, evolution, and philosophy.

Each article includes a complete reference list for your verification and further research.

You are welcome to quote or refer to any of my writings under the fair-use agreement, provided that proper author credit is given (preferably in APA format).

May you enjoy your reading—and feel free to share your thoughts. Your reflections and feedback are always appreciated.

* ‘Strøtanke’ (pl. ‘strøtanker’) is a Danish word that roughly translates as ‘scattered thoughts,’ ‘afterthought,’ ‘reflection,’ or ‘aphorism.’

Articles are ordered chronologically with the latest first

All articles are in English except when flagged otherwise.

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Stress Helps Learning and Bonding: Acute stress can enhance learning, memory retention, and social bonding (animal learning, canine behavior, bonding, stress) 2025.11.24

Your Dog Understands Your Yawn: Yawning is contagious, and it serves both pacifying and social functions (canine behavior, ethology, yawn) 2025.11.15

Muzzle Grasp Behavior in Canids: Article about this intriguing behavior with references (canine behavior, canine muzzle grasp behavior, ethology, wolves) 2025.11.10

Canine Scent Detection: Reviving the Oldest Mammalian Sense—A Sniffer Dog is a Happy Dog: Article with references (canine behavior, canine scent detection, wolves) 2025.11.06

The Principle of Simplicity: About Occam’s Razor, choices, and life at sea (life, philosophy, simplicity) 2025.09.23

The Illusive Free Will—Do We Think Before We Act, or Do We Act Before We Think? Article with references (life, philosophy) 2022.02.13

Psychology Rather Than Power—for the Umpteenth Time, Reinforcers Are Not Rewards: About terminology and frame of mind (animal learning, dogs, dog training) 2019.08.27

The Ethology of Trial and Error: Thirty-Four Illuminating Failures: When listening to a horse leads to success (failure, horse training, philosophy, success) 2016.10.04

Canine Maternal Behavior: Article with references and a list of related articles (dogs, behavior) 2014.11.11

Do Dogs See Colors? What Does It Mean for Our Training? Article with references and a must-read for trainers (color vision, dogs, behavior, dog training) 2014.06.14

Live as If You Were to Die Tomorrow—Learn as If You Were to Live Forever: Dedicated to all students all over the world (learning, life, philosophy) 2014.06.01

Do Dogs Understand What We Say? Article raising questions to ponder (animal communication, canine behavior, interspecific communication) 2014.05.17

The Little Boy and His Dog: A relationship is unique because it involves unique individuals and unique conditions (bonding, children, dogs, life, philosophy) 2014.05.12

Do You Want to Become a Better Dog Trainer? Training other species makes you a better trainer of your favorite species—with video (animal training, dog training, guinea pigs) 2014.05.11

Does Your Dog Show Allelomimetic Behavior? Short article with references about this peculiar behavior (allelomimetic behavior, animal behavior, canine behavior, ethology) 2014.05.10

Children and Dogs—How to Avoid Problems: Short article with references and sound advice to parents and dog owners as well (children, dog training, dogs) 2014.05.09

The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds: Short article with a video and references on natural selection and evolution (evolution, life, survival of the fittest) 2014.05.08

Why Do Dogs Lick Our Faces? Short article with references on this pacifying behavior (animal communication, canine behavior, dogs) 2014.05.07

The Confidence Connection in Animal Training: Video and short article about confidence and self-confidence (animal communication, animal training, dog training) 2014.05.04

Do You Know What the Canine Hip Nudge Behavior Means? Short article with references (canine behavior, canine hip nudge behavior, dogs) 2014.05.03

Can Animals of Different Species Bond like Conspecifics? Short story about bonding (animal behavior, animal communication, bonding) 2014.05.02

Can Two Training Methods Be Equally Good? Blog/article with references (animal behavior, animal training, behaviorism, ethology, philosophy) 2014.05.01

Animal Training—When Doing Nothing is Doing Right: Article about animal training in general, illustrated with horses (animal training, horses) 2014.04.30

“Life of Pi” — Read the Book, Watch the Movie: Book and movie review (bondig, life, philosophy) 2014.04.29

Facts and Morality: Tail Docking and Ear Cropping—Is It Right? On the difference between descriptive and normative statements (critical reasoning, ethics, science) 2014.04.26

Laughter is the Shortest Distance Between Two People: On the importance of laughter (animal behavior, ethology, evolution, laughter) 2014.04.25

Do You Know What the Dog’s Twist Behavior Means? The function of a curious behavior (animal behavior, canine behavior, canine twist behavior) 2014.04.23

How Difficult Can It Be to Be a Dog Owner? To wonder and ponder (bonding, critical thinking, life) 2014.04.22

An Invaluable Lesson—a Relationship is a Natural Thing: Or when political correctness is not even on the table (bonding, children, communication) 2014.04.21

Evolutionary Strategies: How evolutionarily stable strategies function, hawk and dove strategies, with references (biology, ethology, evolution) 2014.04.20

We Talk Too Much and Say Too Little: Or when you cannot improve on silence, be quiet (animal behavior, dog behavior, communication) 2014.04.18

The Single Most Damaging Belief of Ours: In the game of life, no strategy wins alone (life, philosophy) 2014.04.16

Open-minded skepticism: Your map and compass on your journey to knowledge (philosophy, rational behavior) 2014.04.14

I Do Enjoy Being Kind to Other Animals: Facts and morality are different things (ethics, philosophy, rational behavior) 2014.04.13

Your Most Powerful Animal Training Tool: Animal training using applied ethology or merging ethology and behaviorism (animal training, bonding, communication, wolf) 2014.04.12

I’m a Citizen of the World: No country, no culture, no language, no divide (cultures, life, philosophy) 2014.04.11

The Biggest Difference Between Humans and Dogs: Do They Reason? (behaviorism, dogs, emotional behavior, rational behavior) 2014.04.09

We All Say We Love Dogs but Do We? To wonder and ponder (dogs, emotional behavior, love) 2014.04.08

Dogs Are Better Trainers Than We Are: They are better at training us than we are at training them (dogs, dog training) 2014.04.07

El Último Paseo—Original title in English: “The Last Walk:” short novel (children, dogs, cultures) 2013.11.03

為了讓你跟狗狗可以快樂地在一起 “16件別再這麼做的事情  (animals, behavior, dogs) 2013.03.26

I’m a Citizen of the World: reflections of a world traveller (cultures, languages) 2013.03.11

Les 20 principes que tous les entraîneurs d’animaux doivent connaître (animal learning, behavior, dog training) 2013.03.08

Os 20 Princípios que todos os treinadores de animais devem conhecer (animal learning, behavior, dog training) 2013.03.05

Dominancia: dar sentido a lo que no lo tiene (aggression, behavior, biology, dogs, dominance, fear, genetics, hierarchy, submission, social, wolf) 2013.03.02

E così vorresti diventare un buon educatore cinofilo! (behavior, dog training, guinea pig) 2013.02.28

So you want to be a good dog trainer! (animal learning, behavior, cat, dog training, guinea pig, horse training) 2013.02.12

The 20 Principles All Animal Trainers Must Know (animal learning, behavior, dog training) 2013.02.04

Guinea Pig Camps, los talleres de entrenamiento con cobayas (behavior, dog training, guinea pig) 2013.01.03

Campo de treino de porquinhos da Índia (behavior, dog training, guinea pig) 2013.01.03

Guinea Pig Camp—migliora le tue capacità di addestratore di animali (behavior, dog training, guinea pig) 2013.01.01

Les Ateliers Educa A Chons—atelier d’éthologie appliquée (behavior, dog training, guinea pig) 2012.12.31

Guinea Pig Camp: agility and scent detection with guinea pigs (behavior, dog training, guinea pig) 2012.12.28

Dog Training–Let Reason Prevail Over Force! (animal, behavior, dogs, evolution) 2012.09.10

The Mathematician Rat—An Evolutionary Explanation (animals, behavior, evolution, learning) 2012.09.03

16 cosas que debería dejar de hacer para tener una vida más feliz con tu perro (animals, behavior, dogs) 2012.08.13

16 Things You Should Stop Doing In Order To Be Happy With Your Dog (animals, behavior, dogs) 2012.08.01

The 20 Principles of Genes, Environment and Breeding (breeding, dogs, evolution, genetics) 2012.07.17

The Thai Rikki-Tikki-Tavi: short novel about a brave Thai dog and his family (children, dogs, cultures) 2012.07.09

Canine Ethogram—Social and Agonistic Behavior (animals, behavior, dogs, evolution) 2012.06.29

The Final Walk: the last day of a dog and her young owner (children, dogs, cultures) 2012.06.27

Pacifying Behavior—Origin, Function and Evolution (aggression, dogs, dominance, evolution, pacifying, submission) 2012.06.06

Handler Beliefs Do Not Affect Police Dog Detection Outcomes (dogs, dog training, learning, police dogs) 2012.05.22

Odie The Pekinese: Awaiting On Death Row: The misunderstood Pekingese dog that turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing (dogs, dog training) 2012.05.17

Muzzle Grab Behavior in Canids: the truth behind this often misunderstood behavior (dogs, wolf, behavior) 2012.04.25

Dogs And Children: wonderful when it goes well, a nightmare when it goes wrong (animals, children, dogs) 2012.04.16

A Dog’s Self-Respect: short novel on the dignity of an English cocker spaniel (dogs, reinforcement, training) 2012.03.31

Life’s All About Food And Sex: it is as simple as that (animals, behavior, biology, sex) 2012.03.17

Bongo Home Alone: the misadventures of the English cocker spaniel Bongo (animals, dogs) 2012.03.03

Should We Reinforce the Effort or the Results? a controversial topic made simple (behavior, dogs, reinforcement, training) 2012.02.05

Dominance—Making Sense of the Nonsense: a question of definitions and rational thinking (aggression, behavior, biology, dogs, dominance, fear, genetics, hierarchy, submission, social, wolf) 2011.12.11

The Magic Words “Yes’ And ‘No’: no need to complicate what’s simple (dogs, language, punishment, SMAF, training) 2011.11.27

Abrantes or Dunbar—Who’s the Best? You choose! (Abrantes, dogs, Dunbar, training, 8-ball) 2011.11.21

The First Ten Skills You Should Teach Your Puppy: sound advice for puppy owners (dogs, learning, puppies, training) 2011.11.09

SMAF Manual: applied ethology in animal training (behavior, dogs, language, learning, training) 2011.10.22

Dog Training: Signals, Cues, Commands, Obedience and Punishment (command, cue, dog, punishment, signal, training) 2011.10.22

Signal and Cue—What is the Difference? (behavior, cue, dog, signal, training) 2011.10.07

Commands or Signals, Corrections or Punishers, Praise or Reinforcers (behavior, command, dog, punishment, reinforcement, signal, training) 2011.10.03

Unveiling the Myth of Reinforcers and Punishers (behavior, behavior modification, operant conditioning, punishment, reinforcement) 2011.09.21

The Spectrum of Behavior (aggression, behavior, dominance, fear, submission) 2011.09.09

Teach Your Dog to Be Home Alone in Five Steps (behavior, fear, home alone, training) 2011.09.06

Magical Formula: a philosopher and evolutionary biologist wonders and ponders (behavior, evolution) 2011.09.04

Do Animals Have Feelings? (animals, anthropomorphism, Darwin, dogs, emotion) 2011.08.29

The Wolf Within—The Truth About Why We Fear the Wolf (dog, fear, extermination religion, wolf) 2011.08.22

The Paper Book is Dead, Long Live the E-book! Is the paper book really dead? (book, e-book, iPad) 2011.08.18

Facebook Censorship? It’s our world that Facebook is shaping. What do you think? censorship, Facebook, freedom of speech) 2011.08.08

Wolves in France—The Hunt Is On: do the wolves in France have a chance to survive? (extermination, France, sheep, wolf) 2011.07.28

Planet Earth has no Immune Response to Viral Attack: questions to ponder before it is too late (agriculture, earth, ecosystem, extinction, industrial revolution) 2011.07.27

A Newborn is Perfect and You are a Survivor: “strøtanker” of a philosopher and evolutionary biologist (brain, child, dog, life, parents) 2011.07.26

Why Do We Have Dogs? The question all dog owners should ask themselves (dogs, dog owner, relationship, training) 2011.07.26