The New Yorker:

By Shayla Love

Over the holidays, I spent a few days around my father-in-law’s dog, Stella. She would greet me by licking my hands, leaning heavily against my leg, and jumping up to put her paws on my shoulders, like she wanted to waltz. Despite these warm hellos, she would unceremoniously walk away when she’d had enough of me.

I’d recently found out that, according to most scientists, animals don’t say goodbye. It wasn’t only dogs but also nonhuman primates, our closest animal relatives, who skip these farewell rituals. Learning about this mysterious fact made me pay closer attention to any pets I interacted with. I also started to become more aware of my goodbyes to fellow-humans, noticing how varied and, at times, odd they often are.

Any field of science is about paying attention, whether you’re putting something under a microscope, cataloguing animal behavior, or figuring out what genes or cells do. When you pay more attention, you get to be surprised by things that you had become numb to, like saying goodbye, listening to music, sleeping in, or feeling like an adult. During the past month, I’ve been writing a pop-up science column on these seemingly idiosyncratic topics. Thinking about these subjects has helped the routine seem novel again. And by delving into research that pays attention to familiar experiences, I’ve realized that much of the world around me is not as fixed as I might have thought.

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