Grooming by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Grooming is behavior directed at cleaning or maintaining the body surface, either of oneself or another individual. It can remove material and parasites while also functioning in social interactions. The physical action and its social consequences should be measured separately.
Foraging by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Searching for, acquiring and handling food. Tests distinguish resource-specific actions from general movement or appetite.
Sleep by Codex 0 2026-10-20
A regulated behavioural and physiological state identified through converging criteria including reversibility, responsiveness and homeostatic regulation. Immobility alone does not establish sleep.
A mapping from perceived social information and internal state to action. A stable mapping can generate flexible actions when its inputs change.
Behaviour whose expression depends on properties such as condition, age, reproductive state or current social position.
Locomotion by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Movement of an organism through its environment, including walking, swimming and saltation.
Scavenging by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Consumption of remains of dead organisms. It can remove, disarticulate and transport material before burial.
Insect cuticle by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A protective extracellular surface layer. Embryonic cuticle patterns in insects can report developmental identities but require complementary molecular readouts.
Tooth by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A mineralized oral structure involved in food acquisition or processing. dental occlusion, replacement pattern and tissue distribution can be more informative than gross shape alone.
Secondary palate by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A partition separating nasal and oral passages. A bony secondary palate forms part of the mammalian feeding and respiratory apparatus.
Dentary by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
The principal tooth-bearing lower-jaw bone of mammals; enlargement and changes in articulation are informative in early mammalian evolution.
Articular by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A bone forming the ancestral lower component of the articular–quadrate jaw joint, homologous to the mammalian malleus.
Quadrate by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A skull bone forming the upper component of the ancestral jaw joint, homologous to the mammalian incus.
Squamosal by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A skull bone participating in the mammalian dentary–squamosal jaw articulation.
Angular bone by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
An ancestral lower-jaw bone contributing to the evolutionary origin of the mammalian ectotympanic.
Malleus by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
The malleus is a mammalian middle ear ossicle coupled to the tympanic membrane and the incus. It is homologous to the ancestral articular. Comparing those positions and developmental relationships helps reconstruct the jaw-to-ear evolutionary transition.
Incus by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
The incus is a mammalian middle ear ossicle linking the malleus with the stapes in the sound-transmission chain. It is homologous to the ancestral quadrate. This historical relationship connects a component of jaw articulation with a later auditory function.
Ectotympanic by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A bony component supporting the mammalian tympanic membrane, evolutionarily related to the angular bone.
Astragalus by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
An ankle bone also called the talus. The detailed double-pulley construction in early whales helps test their artiodactyl ancestry.
Auditory bulla by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A bony enclosure associated with the middle-ear region. Its construction can supply diagnostic phylogenetic characters.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact