Podcasts about Comparative cognition

Kiran wants to know how animals like dogs are able to follow commands from humans. James Tytko asked Nicky Clayton, Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, to help with the answer... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Roughly 90% of humans are right-handed, and most people also use their left visual field (controlled by the right side of the brain) to recognize faces and emotions. These biases start in early childhood. Guest: Dr. Gillian Forrester, Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Sussex Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seg 1: Why most people are right handed but left eyed Roughly 90% of humans are right-handed, and most people also use their left visual field (controlled by the right side of the brain) to recognize faces and emotions. These biases start in early childhood. Guest: Dr. Gillian Forrester, Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Sussex Seg 2: View From Victoria: Eby returns to work Premier David Eby returns to work and will be faced with questions about healthcare in the province. We get a local look at the top political stories with the help of Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer. Seg 3: Is North America's largest icefield about to hit an irreversible tipping point? The Juneau Icefield, one of North America's largest, is melting at an accelerated rate and nearing an irreversible tipping point, according to new research. Guest: Dr. Bethan Davies, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography at Newcastle University Seg 4: Should we reframe Canadian history? An Indigenous History website, launched in 2018 by seven established Indigenous scholars, serves to challenge dominant historical narratives that marginalize Indigenous perspectives and offers accessible reading lists, oral history podcasts, and profiles of Indigenous historians. Guest: Dr. Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous People, History and Archives at the University of Winnipeg Seg 5: Are solar panel roofs worth the investment? With the growing need for clean energy, does it make sense to install solar panels on your house? Guest: Shaun Mayhew, President and Founder of Penfolds Roofing and Solar Seg 6: Is Canada politically lost and in need of a correction? On Monday, Members of the Federal NDP called on the government to reduce grocery prices during an event in Vancouver. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh criticized the Liberals and Conservatives for voting against a plan proposed by the New Democrats to lower grocery prices, claiming this leaves Canadians struggling with high food costs while grocery CEOs profit significantly. Guest: Jagmeet Singh, Leader of Canada's New Democratic Party Seg 7: The problem of people self identifying as indigenous Deputy Minister Gina Wilson of Indigenous Services Canada addressed the issue of Indigenous identity in the public service, urging honesty in self-identification in an internal blog. Guest: Robert Jago & Angel Ellis, Hosts of the Podcast “Pretendians” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seg 1: How magic can help us understand animal minds At Cambridge University's Comparative Cognition Lab, researchers are pioneering the use of magic tricks as a method to study animal cognition. Guest: Dr. Nicola Clayton, Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge Seg 2: View From Victoria: Letter to the Feds The letter Premier Eby sent to Trudeau has six specific demands for priority funding from Ottawa, so BC can be treated more fairly. We get a local look at the top political stories with the help of Rob Shaw, Political Correspondent for CHEK News. Seg 3: The Weekly Cecchini Check-in for Jun 7, 2024 Trump outraised Biden for the second month in a row and now Biden's cash advantage could be at risk. Guest: Reggie Cecchini, Washington Correspondent for Global News Seg 4: Will new tips help the RCMP discover more victims of Gary Allen Srery? The RCMP in Alberta has been inundated with over 50 tips concerning serial killer Gary Allen Srery, suggesting potential links to additional victims in British Columbia and even in the United States. Guest: Travis McKenzie, Staff Sergeant in charge of the Alberta RCMP Historical Homicide Unit Seg 5: Kickin' It with the Whitecaps for Jun 7, 2024 The team is traveling to Portland for a rivalry game tomorrow night. Guest: Vanni Sartini, Whitecaps Head Coach Seg 6: Celebrating Indigenous cooking traditions BC-produced food docuseries “Moosemeat & Marmalade” is currently in its seventh and final season on APTN. The farewell season is not just about food; it's about the rich tapestry of Indigenous culture. Guest: Art Napoleon, Former Chief of the Saulteau First Nation and Host and Co-Producer of APTN's Moosemeat & Marmalade Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Cambridge University's Comparative Cognition Lab, researchers are pioneering the use of magic tricks as a method to study animal cognition. Guest: Dr. Nicola Clayton, Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Nicola Clayton about cognition across many animals. They define cognition in humans and in animals, intelligence, using magic to understand cognition in animals, embodied mind in animals, and comparative cognition as a type of convergent evolution. They discuss difficulties in using human measures for evaluating animal cognition, New Caledonian crows and their intelligence, consciousness, the future of comparative cognition research, and many more topics.Nicola Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Clare College and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her main interests areas are comparative cognition and the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children. She is currently President of the British Science Association Psychology Section. She is also in residence at Rambert Dance Company. Website: https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/nsc22%40cam.ac.uk Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Gillian Forrester is a Professor of Comparative Cognition in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. She is the director of the Comparative Cognition Group investigating the behaviors and brain organization of children, gorillas and chimpanzees focusing on how cognitive abilities evolve and develop over time and across species. In this episode, we talk about the evolution of handedness and how it relates to language and other cognitive abilities. We first define handedness, and talk about how it evolved. We discuss if human hands are more dexterous, and how handedness works in Great apes. We discuss if it is innate, and which environmental factors play a role in its development. We then get into the neuroscience of handedness and how it relates to cerebral lateralization. We talk about how cerebral lateralization might connect to (higher) cognitive functions, and we discuss if there is a relationship between handedness and cognitive ability. We also discuss the relationship between handedness (and motor function more generally) and language, and the biological precursors of language. Finally, Dr. Forrester answers a question from a patron. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, OLAF ALEX, JONATHAN VISSER, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, SIMON COLUMBUS, PHIL KAVANAGH, MIKKEL STORMYR, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, ALEXANDER DANNBAUER, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, NICK GOLDEN, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, MORTEN EIKELAND, DANIEL FRIEDMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ANTON ERIKSSON, CHARLES MOREY, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, STARRY, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, TOM ROTH, THERPMD, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, RICHARD BOWEN, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, CHRIS STORY, MANUEL OLIVEIRA, AND KIMBERLY JOHNSON! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, VEGA GIDEY, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, ROBERT LEWIS, AND AL NICK ORTIZ! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, AND BOGDAN KANIVETS!

Welcome back, friends—and a very happy new year! For our first episode of 2023 we're going big. We're examining the minds of some of the most massive, majestic megafauna around.  My guest today is Dr. Joshua Plotnik. Josh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College, and the director of the Comparative Cognition for Conservation Lab. His work focuses on elephants—Asian elephants in particular. Josh studies how these creatures perceive and think, how they solve problems and make decisions. As you'll hear, Josh and his colleagues are doing this work, not just to better understand elephant cognition, but also to inform elephant conservation. In this conversation, Josh and I do a healthy bit of Elephants 101. We consider a few of the most widely repeated ideas about elephants—ideas you've probably heard, like that they have exceptional memories and that they mourn their dead. We talk about the three different species of elephants and what we can say about the differences between them. We talk about how elephants use their tusks and their ridiculously dexterous trunks. We talk about how elephants communicate and what their social lives are like. We touch on Dumbo (the well-known Disney character) and Happy (an elephant at the Bronx Zoo who recently became the focus of debates about animal personhood). We of course discuss many of Josh's fascinating findings on elephant cognition—including his findings about mirror self-recognition, consoling behavior, cooperative problem solving, and personality. We also touch on human-elephant conflict, convergent evolution, and the importance of taking the elephant's perspective.  One of our resolutions for the show this year is to grow, to find ways to reach a bigger audience. You can help us do that, if you like, by recommending us to a friend, leaving us a rating, or maybe even writing a review. (We're actually really hurting for reviews, folks—we haven't had a new one in ages, so any help on that front would be most gratefully appreciated.) Another resolution we have is to connect more with you, our audience, and learn more about what you're interested in. So we'd love to hear from you—you can find us on social media or reach out to as at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. One last bit of housekeeping: applications are now open for the 2023 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. The institute will be held this summer in St Andrews, Scotland. If you are interested in the kinds of stuff we talk about on the show—mind, cognition, intelligence broadly construed—you should definitely consider applying. More info at: disi.org. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Josh Plotnik. I think you'll agree that Josh is quite the genial guide to the elephant mind. And he gives us a ton to think about here. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 5:00 – The Mythbusters episode about whether elephants are afraid of mice. 6:45 – An academic article about the possibility that elephants populated certain land masses by swimming to them. 8:30 – A research article about elephants' concepts of death; another on the same topic. 17:30 — The researcher Shermin de Silva works on elephants in Sri Lanka. 19:00 – A first study finding that African elephants can follow human pointing gestures. A later study by Dr. Plotnik and colleagues finding that Asian elephants do not follow human pointing gestures. 23:00 – A study quantifying different aspects of the elephant brain. 24:00 – For some of the latest findings about cephalopods, see our episode ‘The Savvy Cephalopod' with Dr. Alex Schnell. 25:30 – Elephants in Africa may be becoming tuskless due to poaching. A research article on the topic. 26:30 – A research article on “handedness” (aka laterality) in elephants. 27:30 – The elephant trunk is extraordinarily dexterous, in part because of its “fingers.” A recent study of the basis for this dexterity. For example, elephants can peel bananas (video) and also use their trunks to suction up objects like chips (research article). 30:00 – A research article on the production and interpretation of “periscoping” behavior in elephants. 32:30 – A popular article about Joyce Poole's research on the elephant “ethogram.” A fuller article on elephant communication. 33:45 – A study by Dr. Plotnik and Frans de Waal about elephant consolation behavior. 35:00 – Images on Twitter of young elephants sucking their trunks, presumably as self-consoling behavior. 37:00 – A research article on elephant's “seismic communication.” 42:00 – The original study by Dr. Plotnik and colleagues about mirror self-recognition in elephants. See also our audio essay about mirror self-recognition, including some criticisms of the paradigm. 53:00 – A popular essay by Jill Lepore about Happy the elephant, and the legal case surrounding whether or not she should be considered a “person.” 55:30 – The original study by Dr. Plotnik and colleagues on cooperative problem solving in elephants. 57:30 – A later study by Li-Li Li, Dr. Plotnik and colleagues on how elephants are able to sustain cooperation. 1:00:00 – A review article about research on Theory of Mind in animals. 1:01:00 – A study by Sarah Jacobson, Dr. Plotnik, and colleagues using puzzle boxes to understand elephant innovation and problem solving. The same study examined personality factors that predict success on the task. 1:04:00 – See also our recent episode on animal personality. 1:07:00 – See a recent review paper by Dr. Plotnik and a colleague on elephant cognition in the context of human-elephant conflict. 1:09:00 – Other studies by Dr. Plotnik's group that we did not cover include work on the elephant concepts of quantity and elephant bodily awareness. 1:10:00 – A paper by Dr. Plotnik and (former guest) Nicola Clayton on the idea of convergent evolution in diverse species and taxa. 1:16:30 – Along with colleagues, Dr. Plotnik founded the organization Think Elephants International.   Dr. Plotnik recommends: Elephants, by Hannah Mumby (see also earlier books by Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Joyce Poole) A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky Chimpanzee Politics, by Frans de Waal (see also de Waal's more recent books)   You can read more about Josh's work at his lab website and follow him on Twitter.   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. **You can now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!** We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Perform a magic trick for a member of the crow family and it will show how startled it is by the unexpected. Crows are known for being the Einsteins of the avian world, but what about the animals that feed us, clothe us, entertain us – what is the nature of their intelligence? Will our growing realisation that animals may be experiencing the world around them in ways that would surprise us, reframe our understanding of animal welfare? Tune in for some ideas. Jonathan Birch is an associate professor at the London School of Economics' Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science. In 2021, the review he led into the sentience of invertebrates resulted in the amendment of the British government's Animal Welfare Bill to include octopuses, crabs and lobsters. Associate professor at the University of Leuven's Animal and Human Health Engineering Unit, Tomas Norton leads research on sustainable precision livestock farming and is particularly interested in the interface between animal health, welfare and productivity. Nicola Clayton is a fellow of the Royal Society and professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Nicola is particularly interested in the processes of thinking with and without words, comparing the cognitive capacities of corvids, cephalopods and children.

This is podcast #65 with Dr. Ikuma Adachi. Before getting into the interview, I announce with great sadness the passing of Dr. Steve Ross, as announced by Lincoln Park Zoo. Steve was a formidable figure in chimpanzee conservation and animal...

This is podcast #65 with Dr. Ikuma Adachi. Before getting into the interview, I announce with great sadness the passing of Dr. Steve Ross, as announced by Lincoln Park Zoo. Steve was a formidable figure in chimpanzee conservation and animal...

This is podcast #65 with Dr. Ikuma Adachi. Before getting into the interview, I announce with great sadness the passing of Dr. Steve Ross, as announced by Lincoln Park Zoo. Steve was a formidable figure in chimpanzee conservation and animal...

To be a good magician, you have to be a good psychologist. If you want to pull off a really good magic trick, you need to know your audience—what they are likely to attend to or gloss over, what shortcuts they take, what predictions they tend to make. Which all raises a question: Could you get to know a new audience, a very different audience, by seeing which tricks they fall for and which they don't? Could we use magic as a scientific tool, in other words, as a window into minds that may be quite unlike our own? My guest today is Dr. Nicola Clayton. Nicky is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Psychology department at the University of Cambridge. She is this year's winner of the prestigious ASAB medal, awarded by Association for the Study of Animal Behavior. Nicky is perhaps best known for her research on birds—corvids in particular—and how they show evidence of sophisticated cognitive abilities like memory, planning, mental time travel, and even understanding of other minds. Recently, Nicky and her colleagues have been up to something new: showing magic tricks to birds, as a way of probing their impressive mental capacities. Here, Nicky and I talk about why magic is a useful tool for psychologists. We discuss her pioneering earlier work on corvids and, in particular, on how they hide or “cache” vast amounts of food. We talk about how corvids protect their caches from would-be thieves using tactics that, curiously, resemble some of those used by human magicians. We dive into some recent studies from Nicky's lab that involved showing classic magic tricks to Eurasian jays. And, finally, we get a tiny taste of what might be coming up in this line of research. Before we get to it, one quick announcement: Applications are now open for the 2022 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute or DISI. After two years in the Zoomverse, DISI will be back in 3D this summer in St Andrews, Scotland. If you like the topics we talk about on this show, it's a pretty safe bet you'd be into DISI. So check out disi.org for more info. Alright folks, without further hocus pocus, here's my conversation about magic and birds with Dr. Nicky Clayton. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 2:45 ­– A recent editorial in Science by Dr. Clayton and colleagues about the promise of using magic to illuminate animal minds. 4:45 – One of Dr. Clayton's primary collaborators on her magic studies is Clive Wilkins, who is an artist, writer, and professional magician. He is a member of the Magic Circle in London. 8:30 – For more on tool use in corvids, see our prior episode with Dr. Alex Taylor. Dr. Taylor and Dr. Clayton have collaborated on a number of studies. 10:30 – A 2004 paper in Science by Dr. Clayton and Dr. Nathan Emery on the convergent evolution of intelligence in apes and corvids. A recent paper on physical and social intelligence in ravens. 14:00 – Dr. Clayton has authored a number of influential studies on caching behavior in corvids; see here, here, and here, among others. 17:30 – A paper by Dr. Clayton and a colleague on how caching jays are sensitive to who can hear them caching. 21:30 – A recent paper in PNAS by Dr. Clayton and her colleagues, including lead author Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, examining three sleight of hand tricks in jays and humans. 24:00 – A recent video profile of Dr. Clayton's line of work on magic includes examples of these sleight of hand tricks. 27:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Clayton and her colleagues, including lead author Dr. Alex Schnell, examining a version of the “cup and balls” trick, also shown to jays.   35:00 – The proposed priming experiment was inspired by a recent paper on subconscious gestural priming in humans. 36:00 – For work on cephalopods, see our prior episode with Dr. Alex Schnell, who has collaborated with Dr. Clayton on the magic work in addition to wave-making studies on cephalopods. Dr. Clayton recommends: A profile of her lab's work on magic in New Scientist Bird Brain, by Nathan Emery Experiencing the Impossible, by Gustav Kuhn You can find Dr. Clayton on Twitter (@nickyclayton22).   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

After 20 years of planning, preparation and a nail-biting build up fraught by delays The James Webb Space telescope finally launched on Christmas day 2021. Anxious astronomers across the globe looked on as the JWST then completed even riskier manoeuvres to unfurl the 18 hexagonal components that make up its 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror. Cosmologist Dr Sheona Urquhart from the Open University tells us about the astronomical community's tense Christmas day. Fresh from a TV spot on BBC Two's Digging for Britain this week, Dr Dean Lomax and PhD candidate Emily Swaby share their excitement unearthing Rutland's ‘Sea Dragon' and explore what this find could tell us about Ichthyosaurs. At over 10 meters long this ancient ocean predator is the largest complete fossil of its kind to be discovered in the UK. Ichthyosaurs are commonly associated with Dorset and Yorkshire coastlines where fossils are often revealed as surrounding rock is eroded by the elements. Finding an ichthyosaur fossil inland is unusual but not unexpected as the higher sea levels 200 million years ago would put the east midlands underwater. And whilst the palaeontologists have been struggling through the Jurassic mud, cognition researchers at the University of Cambridge have been wowing their birds with magic tricks. Professor Nicky Clayton FRS, Professor of Comparative Cognition, explains what we can learn about the way jays think by assessing their reaction to different sleight-of-hand tricks. Corvids, the family to which these feathered friends belong, have long interested researchers due to their impressive cognitive abilities and Nicky's team has shown that their Jays are not fooled by all of the same mis-directions as we are, but are fooled by some. And it could be down to not being able to tell the difference between a finger and a feather. Presented by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Alex Mansfield Assistant Producer Emily Bird Made in association with The Open University

Scientist and metal drummer Marisa Hoeschele received an honours B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada in 2006. After that she completed an M.Sc. and PhD in Psychology with a specialization in Comparative Cognition and Behaviour at the University of Alberta, Canada.In 2013 she moved to Vienna as a post-doc and built the budgie lab at the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna. In October 2018 she started her own group, known as the “Musicality and Bioacoustics” group, at the Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This institute has researchers from many different disciplines all studying problems in acoustics: however the first animal studies were not conducted on site until this year in April when the budgie lab was moved to the institute. Marisa studies how different animals, including humans, perceive and produce sounds. The broader goal is to understand where music and language come from and what other similar capacities might exist in the animal kingdom.Marisa is the first guest I've had on who had a pop filter on her mic.  That's neither here nor there but it's still a thing.We talked, of course, about how Marisa got into the field in the first place, a bit about Austria and, obviously about her work.  Her work is interdisciplinary and we talked a bit about how this sort of thing is important not just in animal cognition, but in any field.mp3 download

My guest today is Nicola Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Clare College and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her expertise lies in the contemporary study of comparative cognition, integrating a knowledge of both biology and psychology to introduce new ways of thinking about the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children. She is currently President of the British Science Association Psychology Section. The topic is human evolution plus corvid communication. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: The Intelligence of Crows Mental time travel Consciousness, identity, memory and creativity Chimpanzees and Humans Dance Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Nicola Clayton is an experimental psychologist whose studies of members of the crow family have shattered assumptions about the cognitive abilities of non-human animals. Through a series of imaginatively designed experiments, she has shown that rooks, jackdaws and jays can plan for the future and reflect on the past, as well as understand that members of their social groups have minds of their own. In pursuing her interest in the development and evolution of non-verbal cognition, Nicola also works with young children and non-human apes. Her findings have led her to suggest that intelligence in birds and human and non-human primates evolved independently. A dancer herself, Nicola explores dance as a form of non-verbal communication. She was the first Scientist in Residence at the dance company Rambert, a title she has continuously held since 2011. She also collaborates with artist and writer Clive Wilkins on The Captured Thought. Nicky and Clive regularly dance together, have given a TEDx talk entitled ‘Conversations Without Words.' Through the magic of six degrees of separation Nicky and I connected. How exactly? Henry Gee came on my show and said I should speak with Nicky. He was right! Bio: Nicola Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Clare College and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her expertise lies in the contemporary study of comparative cognition, integrating a knowledge of both biology and psychology to introduce new ways of thinking about the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children. She is currently President of the British Science Association Psychology Section. In this episode of Trend Following Radio: The Intelligence of Crows Mental time travel Consciousness, identity, memory and creativity Chimpanzees and Humans Dance

Michael J. Beran is Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Language Research Center at Georgia State University.  He received his B.A. in Psychology from Oglethorpe University in 1995, his M.A. in 1997, and his Ph.D. in 2002, both from Georgia State University.  His research is conducted with human and nonhuman primates, including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, capuchin monkeys, and rhesus monkeys.  He also has done research with bears, elephants, and robins.  His research interests include perception, numerical cognition, metacognition, planning and prospective memory, self-control, decision making, and language acquisition.  Dr. Beran is a Fellow of Division 3 and Division 6 of the American Psychological Association and a Fellow of the Psychonomics Society.  He was the inaugural Duane M. Rumbaugh Fellow at Georgia State University.  He received the Brenda A. Milner award from the APA in 2005.  He has served as the President of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the Southeast Psychological Association, and the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology (Division 6 of APA).  He is the current Editor of Animal Behavior and Cognition and has served on numerous editorial boards including Cognition, Animal Cognition, Frontiers in Comparative Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, the Journal of Comparative Psychology, Learning and Behavior, and the International Journal of Comparative Psychology.  He has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and contributed chapters to over 50 edited books and encyclopedia.  He also is the co-editor of Foundations of Metacognition (2012, Oxford University Press), the author of Self-control in Animals and People (2018, Elsevier), and the co-editor of the forthcoming Primate Cognitive Studies (2022, Cambridge University Press).  Mike gets 2 pics because I love this slideHis research has been featured on numerous television and radio programs and in magazines, including Animal Planet, BBC, New Scientist, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American Mind.  His research is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Templeton Foundation, and the European Science Foundation.  In addition to the fun things he gets to do in his lab and with his students and colleagues, he enjoys beekeeping, hiking, paintball with friends (and enemies!), travel, and the occasional good bourbon.  And, of course, ‘Bama football.  Roll Tide.mp3 download

Episode Summary:In this episode, Matthew speaks with Marcela Benítez (@mebenitez85), an assistant professor in the department of Anthropology at Emory University and co-director of the Capuchinos de Taboga research project.They start out by talking about social comparisons in humans and non-human primates. They discuss mutual assessment and Marcela's work exploring mutual assessment in geladas. Then they talk about non-human primate perceptions of inequity, its implications for cooperation, and the role of outgroups in promoting in-group cooperation. After the break, they discuss the overlap between psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary anthropology as well as the work of Marcela and her colleagues to make primate fieldwork for accessible for undergraduates.For more content from this interview with Marcela, check out the Supplemental Material bonus episode in your feed.This week's Two-Minute Takeaway comes from Sateesh Vankatesh (@SVenkatesh__), a graduate student in the labs of Dr. Joshua Plotnik (@cccanimals) and Dr. Shifra Goldenberg (@ShifGold), working with the Smithsonian (@NationalZoo). Read more about the Comparative Cognition for Conservation lab here. Papers relevant to today's show:1. The discussed review of social comparisons and their evolutionary originsBenítez, M. E., & Brosnan, S. F. (2019). The Evolutionary Roots of Social Comparisons. Social Comparison, Judgment, and Behavior, 462.2.  Marcela's paper demonstrating mutual assessment of fighting ability in geladasBenítez, M. E., Pappano, D. J., Beehner, J. C., & Bergman, T. J. (2017). Evidence for mutual assessment in a wild primate. Scientific reports, 7(1), 1-11.3. Sarah Brosnan's TED talk, including video of a capuchin rejecting a cucumber in the face of inequity (~2:40 into the talk)Video here Credits:The Animal Behavior Podcast is created by Matthew Zipple (@MatthewZipple) and Amy Strauss (@avstrauss).You can contact us at animalbehaviorpod@gmail.com and find us on Twitter (@AnimalBehavPod).Our theme song is by Sally Street (@Rainbow_Road13), assistant professor in evolutionary anthropology at Durham University in the UK. You can find her on Sound Cloud here: https://soundcloud.com/rainbow_road_music.Musical transitions by André Gonçalves (@fieryangelsfell), a researcher at the primate research institute at Kyoto University.Our logo was designed by Adeline Durand-Monteil (@adelinedurandm), a master's student in ecology and evolution. You can see more of Adeline's work on her website: https://adelinedurandmonteil.wordpress.com/.The Animal Behavior Podcast is produced with support from the Animal Behavior Society (@AnimBehSociety)

On where intelligent things can go, and when, and how.    Subscribe at: paid.retraice.com    Details: travel is smart, motion is dumb; What's the difference?; mental time travel; the marshmallow test—and trust; time travel is space travel; space and time are bizarre; drawing the intelligence line; Hinton's five-year-old experiment; other creatures; What is natural intelligence really about?; amendments and corrections—Feynman's rules, Darwin's delay. Complete notes and video at: https://www.retraice.com/segments/re11   Air date: Wednesday, 4th Nov. 2020, 1 : 05 PM Pacific/US.   Chapters: 00:00 travel is smart, motion is dumb; 03:15 What's the difference?; 06:24 mental time travel; 07:20 the marshmallow test—and trust; 10:12 time travel is space travel; 11:24 space and time are bizarre; 13:26 drawing the intelligence line; 15:30 Hinton's five-year-old experiment; 20:56 other creatures; 22:52 What is natural intelligence really about?; 23:22 amendments and corrections—Feynman's rules, Darwin's delay.   References:    Ford, M. (2018). Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it. Packt. ISBN: 978-1789131512. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1789131512 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1789131512      Kidd, C., Palmeri, H., & Aslin, R. N. (2013). Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition, 126(1), 109–114. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027712001849 Retrieved 4th Nov. 2020.      Mischel, W. (2014). The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. Little, Brown and Company, Kindle ed. ISBN: 978-0316230858. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0316230858 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0316230858 https://lccn.loc.gov/2014018058      O’Shea, M. (2005). The Brain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford. ISBN: 978-0192853929. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0192853929 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0192853929 https://lccn.loc.gov/2005027741      Retraice (2020/09/07). Re1: Three Kinds of Intelligence. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re1 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.      Retraice (2020/11/02). Re10: Living to Guess Another Day. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re10 Retrieved 2nd Nov. 2020.      Russell, B. (1921). The Analysis of Mind. Macmillan. No ISBN. https://books.google.com/books?id=4dYLAAAAIAAJ Retrieved 6th May. 2019.      Shettleworth, S. J. (2013). Fundamentals of Comparative Cognition. Oxford. ISBN: 978-0195343106. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0195343106 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0195343106 https://lccn.loc.gov/2012000398      Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the marshmallow test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159–1177. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618761661 Retrieved 4th Nov. 2020.   Copyright: 2020 Retraice, Inc. https://retraice.com

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.10.03.324814v1?rss=1 Authors: Seitz, B. M., McCune, K. B., MacPherson, M., Bergeron, L. M., Blaisdell, A. P., Logan, C. J. Abstract: Operant chambers are small enclosures used to test animal behavior and cognition. While traditionally reliant on simple technologies for presenting stimuli (e.g., lights and sounds) and recording responses made to basic manipulanda (e.g., levers and buttons), an increasing number of researchers are beginning to use Touchscreen-equipped Operant Chambers (TOCs). These TOCs have obvious advantages, namely by allowing researchers to present a near infinite number of stimuli as well as increased flexibility in the types of responses that can be made and recorded. Here, we trained wild-caught adult and juvenile great-tailed grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) to complete experiments using a TOC. We have learned much from these efforts, and outline the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches. We report data from our training sessions and discuss important modifications we made to facilitate animal engagement and participation in various tasks. Finally, we provide a "training guide" for creating experiments using PsychoPy, a free and open-source software that we have found to be incredibly useful during these endeavors. This article, therefore, should serve as a useful resource to those interested in switching to or maintaining a TOC, or who similarly wish to use a TOC to test the cognitive abilities of non-model species or wild-caught individuals. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info

Spring may actually be on its way. It was -2 yesterday when we recorded this. That said, man did we get a lot of snow the night before.Oh yeah, I’m writing this on Saturday but we recorded this (i.e. went shopping) yesterday, on Friday.Of course we had to pick up an Amazon package as well. That’s becoming a regular stop.The conference I go to in Florida, the Conference on Comparative Cognition, was cancelled due to COVID-19. The executive committee made the right call I think. Having people hang out together from all over the worlds probably not the best thing right now.On the COVID-19 front, the only thing our grocery store was out of was hand sanitizer.It’s supposed to go up to 8C tomorrow, so maybe all of this snow will be gone by March 19, as I say every year.

Spring may actually be on its way. It was -2 yesterday when we recorded this. That said, man did we get a lot of snow the night before. Oh yeah, I’m writing this on Saturday but we recorded this (i.e. went shopping) yesterday, on Friday. Of course we had to pick up an Amazon package as well. That’s becoming a regular stop. The conference I go to in Florida, the Conference on Comparative Cognition, was cancelled due to COVID-19. The executive committee made the right call I think. Having people hang out together from all over the worlds probably not the best thing right now. On the COVID-19 front, the only thing our grocery store was out of was hand sanitizer. It’s supposed to go up to 8C tomorrow, so maybe all of this snow will be gone by March 19, as I say every year.

CARTA celebrates its 10th anniversary with a whirlwind tour of anthropogeny, the study of the origin of humans, by addressing these questions across multiple disciplines: What do we know for certain? What do we think we know? What do we need to know? How do we proceed? Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 34698]

CARTA celebrates its 10th anniversary with a whirlwind tour of anthropogeny, the study of the origin of humans, by addressing these questions across multiple disciplines: What do we know for certain? What do we think we know? What do we need to know? How do we proceed? Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 34698]

CARTA celebrates its 10th anniversary with a whirlwind tour of anthropogeny, the study of the origin of humans, by addressing these questions across multiple disciplines: What do we know for certain? What do we think we know? What do we need to know? How do we proceed? Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 34698]

CARTA celebrates its 10th anniversary with a whirlwind tour of anthropogeny, the study of the origin of humans, by addressing these questions across multiple disciplines: What do we know for certain? What do we think we know? What do we need to know? How do we proceed? Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 34698]

CARTA celebrates its 10th anniversary with a whirlwind tour of anthropogeny, the study of the origin of humans, by addressing these questions across multiple disciplines: What do we know for certain? What do we think we know? What do we need to know? How do we proceed? Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 34698]

Two animal psychologists and a historian of animal studies join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclought to discuss whether it's possible to recognise similar traits in humans, chimps, crows, hawks, dogs and cats in terms of affinity and attachment, despite different evolutionary paths. How do we know when a chimp wants to play? How does one crow decide what to feed its mate? The Free Thinking Festival explores the emotional similarities and differences between humans & animals. Nicky Clayton is a scientist and a dancer who began as a zoologist and moved into psychology. She is Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is also Scientist in Residence at dance company Rambert and co-founder of The Captured Thought blog and project. Her expertise is in studying members of the crow family, who have huge brains for their body size, and in studying thinking with and without words. Kim Bard is a Professor at the University of Portsmouth. She has studied the development of emotions, cognition, communication, and attachment in captive young chimpanzees for over 30 years. Her research concerns understanding the process of development in evolution and contributes to captive animal welfare. Erica Fudge is Professor of English Studies and Director of the British Animal Studies Network at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She has written widely on modern and historical human-animal relationships and has recently finished a study of people's lives with their livestock animals in early modern England titled Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Nicky Clayton is the Professor of Comparative Cognition and a University Teaching Officer in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Clare College. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010. Her expertise as a scientist lies in the contemporary study of how animals and children think.Clive Wilkins works as a fine art painter and has exhibited widely including at the National Portrait Gallery, London on several occasions. He has also exhibited at the Royal Academy and various Mayfair galleries. Clive is a performer and professional magician with a particular interest in the nature of illusion and the psychology of perception and the methods used to make sense of a strange world.Together this dynamic duo are the co-founders of The Captured Thought, which is an arts and science collaboration that explores mental time travel, the subjective experience of thinking and the nature of creativity.Who the heck knows what we'll get into, but I'm sure you'll agree it's going to be one heck of an interesting ride...oh...and 'yes' there will be magic performed during the chat

Author : Ken Liu Narrator : Adam Pracht Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums An Advanced Reader's Picture Book of Comparative Cognition originally appeared in March 2016 as part of the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu. Author's Notes: For more on consciousness as compression, see: Maguire, Phil, […] Source

So, I just got back from the Conference on Comparative Cognition, which explains the odd release day for the podcast. At left you can see how generally evil the Orlando airport is. The trip was good.  Maddie gave a great talk, and generally the conference itself was great, as it always is.  This year there was the Space Coast March For Science which many conference goers attended.  Maddie included.  I did not, as it umm, well, is in the Florida sun. That said, many went, and here's a cool video of it. Debit and credit machines were down at the grocery store, people had to pay with, CASH.  It felt so 1996.  Then again, in the States you still sign for your credit card purchases rather than use a chip card because FREEDOM!!!

Emma Tecwyn is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Daphna Buchsbaum’s Computational Cognitive Development Lab in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto (which is the school I went to, thus making Emma the coolest guest so far on the show). She does research in the overlapping areas of comparative cognition and cognitive development to answer questions about the evolution and development of cognitive abilities. Emma and a friendEmma has a BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Birmingham, UK. During her undergraduate degree she spent a year studying at the Freie Universitat in Berlin, Germany, where she took classes in animal behaviour and primatology, which sparked her interest in animal cognition. She subsequently obtained an MSc in Animal Behaviour from Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, where she did research on grazing interactions between wild and domestic herbivores on a Kenyan game reserve. She later returned to Birmingham to complete her PhD on great ape physical cognition under the supervision of Jackie Chappell and Susannah Thorpe, where she focussed on whether orangutans, bonobos and children can plan sequences of actions to solve physical problems. She then spent a year in Amanda Seed’s lab at the University of St Andrews in Scotland working on causal sequence imitation and probabilistic inference in capuchin monkeys, before moving to Toronto in November 2014.Emma’s current lines of research include physical reasoning in dogs, causal sequence imitation in dogs and toddlers, and how different species and children of different ages weight and integrate their physical knowledge and social information. We talked about Emma's research, about the recent Conference on Comparative Cognition, and about the GTA Animal Cognition Group, which she coordinates.  Oh and how philosophy of animal mind is a thing.Thanks again to Red Arms for letting me mash up their music with the ending theme, buy their music now.mp3 download

Valerie Kuhlmeieris an Associate Professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, Canada.  She is the director of The Infant Cognition Group, a laboratory studying cognitive development in the first few years of life.Val is happy about her bookValerie grew up outside of Los Angeles, CA, but moved south to the University of California, San Diego, to pursue a BA and a BS in Anthropology and Biology, respectively.  There, she worked with Christine Johnson, a comparative cognitive psychologist who was studying gaze-following behaviour in bonobos at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park.  Exhibiting great dedication to the scientific endeavor, Valerie then left the sunny beaches of San Diego for the snowy winters of Columbus, Ohio.  There, she worked under the supervision of Sally Boysen at the Ohio State University Chimp Center, studying theory of mind and the use of physical representations of space such as maps and scale models.  She was a regular attendee of the Tri-State Animal Learning Conference and became a founding member (founding student member, that is…she’s not THAT old) of the Comparative Cognition Society. She then spent four years working as a postdoctoral fellow and instructor at Yale University in New Haven, CT.  Her previous research examining social-cognition in nonhuman primates formed a good foundation for her work with mentors Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom on cognitive development in young human primates, specifically infants.   She also developed an undergraduate course on Comparative Cognition and has been updating and improving it ever since.In 2004, she accepted a position at Queen’s University.  Her research program focuses on cognition from a developmental and evolutionary perspective.  Specifically, she studies the development of social cognition, including the recognition of others’ goals and needs (e.g., intention reading, theory of mind), the imitative and empathetic responses to those goals and needs, and the subsequent generation of prosocial behaviour.  She also continues to teach courses on Comparative Cognition, using a recently published textbook she coauthored with Mary (Cella) Olmsted. This one was a great deal of fun partly because we talked about big issues like theory of mind and where comparative cognition fits in the broader field of psychology.Thanks again to Red Arms for letting me mash up their music in the closing theme. Buy their music now.Mp3 Download

We started out on a quick grocery trip on Monday as I was away at the Conference on Comparative Cognition with Madeleine. We talked about podcasting again, which seems to be a running theme. If you haven't yet checked out Isabelle's new art podcast you should. THere's a link on the left, click it. Then it was off to our regularly scheduled grocery cast, yay!!! There is a bit in French during the grocery cast just for Bob. Finally we went to the student year end art show along with the host of the Jonathan Files!

Nicky Clayton is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge, and she's done more than any other scientist to transform the way we think about animal intelligence, and particularly the intelligence of birds. She's spent her career observing rooks and jays and other members of the corvid family, watching them as they play tricks on each other, and sing and dance together. Her work has challenged the assumption that only humans have the intelligence to plan for the future and reminisce about the past, that only humans can understand the minds of others. She says that she's spent most of her life wondering what it would be like to be a bird: 'to fly, to see colours in the ultraviolet, and to sing as beautifully as they do'. Alongside her scientific research, Nicky Clayton has a passion for tango, and has collaborated with Ballet Rambert as a scientist in residence. In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the creative inspiration she finds in music. Her musical choices include Ravel, Janacek and Bruckner, and Astor Piazzolla's Tango for an Angel; as well as Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds, and the call of a reed warbler. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

We end the course with the end of comparative cognition. Music "Hundred Times Over" by Private Joker

More good stuff, lots of it by me..... Music "A Little Bit More" by Uncle Seth

Finally, the good stuff..... Music "Hundred Times Over" by Private Joke

So, yesterday I spoke at CO3 in Melbourne, Florida. Some of the students in Memory and Brain and Behaviour asked me to record it, so, umm, here it is. I was introduced by Ken Cheng, which is fun. Music “Hundred Times Over” by Private Joker

Comparative Cognition 2, and, a visit from Jonathan Music "Stretch" by DICE

We start the really interesting stuff, comparative cognition. Music "Virgin of Night Rock" by Vee

Nicky Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge University. Her work challenges how we think of intelligence and she says that birds' brains developed independently from humans or apes. Members of the corvid family, such as crows and jays appear to plan for the future and predict other birds behaviour in her elegant experiments.One experiment she has designed was inspired by Aesop's fable of the hungry crow. Her work raises questions about the understanding of animal behaviour, including whether, as humans, we can ever interpret the actions of other species accurately. But she says her research with birds and other animals can help illuminate young children's activities and how their brains develop. Nicky Clayton is scientist in residence at the Rambert Dance Company and her latest collaboration with Mark Baldwin, the artistic director, is "Seven for a secret, never to be told" which takes concepts from childhood behaviour and reinterprets them choreographically. Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

This week Libby Purves is joined by Professor Nicky Clayton, Bill Roedy, Edward Petherbridge and Steve Greenhaugh. Nicky Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge University and is an expert in bird behaviour. She is also passionate about dance and now combines these two strands as the Rambert Dance Company's first 'Scientist in Residence'. She is working with the Rambert on a new production, "Seven for a Secret, Never to be Told" and will be at this year's Hay Festival. Bill Roedy is the former Chairman and Chief Executive of MTV. In his book, 'What Makes Business Rock', he tells the story of how he built MTV into a global phenomenon. 'What Makes Business Rock' is published by Wiley. Edward Petherbridge is a distinguished stage actor who has had a long and varied career. He was part of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic and starred as Lord Peter Wimsey in the BBC adaptation of the Dorothy L. Sayers Mysteries. He is currently playing the prophet Teresias in Sophocles' 'Antigone' (translated by Timberlake Wertenbaker) at London's Southwark Playhouse. Steve Greenhaugh worked as an RSPCA inspector in Lancashire for twenty-eight years. His book ' A Seal Pup in My Bath' tells of his training and early career rescuing thousands of injured, abandoned and abused animals from stranded cats and injured birds, to joining on police raids on quail fighting rings. 'A Seal Pup in My Bath - Tales From an RSPCA Inspector' is published by Constable.