My recent research has recently been focusing on a number of areas of behavioral neuroscience: Broadly, these deal with (a) social behavior and social neuroscience; and (b) how individuals deal with the problems and threats that they encounter in the natural environment. The former deals with: (i) social foundations of behavior; (ii) social cognition, - social communication and the use of social information; (iii) neurobiology of social recognition and social attraction. The latter incorporates examinations of: (i) the biological defense mechanisms that are employed by animals in response to various threats (e.g. conspecifics, predators, parasites, bacterial and other infectious agents, toxins) and (ii) how individuals deal with the various problems associated with the acquisition of resources (e.g. food (and examinations of ingestive responses) and other resources, mates) from the environment; (iii) how various social factors (e.g. social information, “trust”), modulate risk and defensive behavior.