Pheromones

21 Feb, 2019 590 Animals (Zoology)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how members of the same species send each other invisible chemical signals to influence the way they behave. Pheromones are used by species across the animal kingdom in a variety of ways, such as laying trails to be followed, to raise the alarm, to scatter from predators, to signal dominance and to enhance attractiveness and, in honey bees, even direct development into queen or worker.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Tristram Wyatt No other episodes
    Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford
  • Jane Hurst No other episodes
    William Prescott Professor of Animal Science at the University of Liverpool
  • Francis Ratnieks No other episodes
    Professor of Apiculture and Head of the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of Sussex

Reading list

  • Principles of Animal Communication
    Jack W. Bradbury and Sandra L. Vehrencamp (Sinauer, 2011) Google Books →
  • For Love of Insects
    Thomas Eisner (Harvard University Press, 2005) Google Books →
  • Pheromones and Animal Behavior: Chemical Signals and Signatures
    Tristram D. Wyatt (Cambridge University Press, 2014) Google Books →
  • Animal Behaviour: A Very Short Introduction
    Tristram D. Wyatt (Oxford University Press, 2017) Google Books →

Related episodes

Programme ID: m0002mdl

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002mdl

Auto-category: 591.5 (Animal behavior and zoology)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. In 1959, scientists discovered pheromones, the chemical signals that make so many animals act without thinking or needing to think.