The link between thinking & feeling in nonhuman animals
- flexibility
- Open to proposals
Excited to mentor projects on
I am very open to all sorts of things. Given my expertise in zoo based research/with wild animals, it would make sense to focus on anything related to these settings, rather than on farmed or laboratory animals or pets.
Who I'm looking for
I am looking for a mentee who has a project in mind (it may not be a fully developed idea, just a general one). I do not have a very specific project in mind, and am therefore not able to prescribe a 'to do list' project. I see my role as a mentor as supporting/guiding, not dictating or prescribing.
Questions for applicants
Are you happy to work on captive wildlife, i.e., in zoos and sanctuaries?
Support offered
- Shaping direction
- Drafting
- Facilitating connections
- Accountability
- Domain expertise
- format
- Research & writing · Product & entrepreneurship · Field-building & outreach · Project scoping
- topic
- Near-term impact · Wild animal welfare · Neglected animal groups · Macrostrategy · Longtermism
Fay Clark
I am a comparative psychologist/animal welfare scientist who works at the interface of animal cognition and welfare - so, how thinking impacts feeling, and vice versa. I work in academia but I previously worked for NGOs (a couple of major UK zoos) and have maintained connections with zoos and sanctuaries worldwide where I perform my collaborative research. I mainly work with primates and marine mammals. I have several interests in animal AI: first, AI could really help in my area of research by enabling remote detection and logging of behaviours. A lot of the animals I work with are difficult to study for long periods of time. Second, there has been a real ‘boom’ in animal-computer interaction innovations recently (full conferences dedicated to the topic!) But I think ACI deserves some really cautious scientific attention - just because we CAN give animals computers to interact with doesn’t mean we SHOULD. I actually work a lot on computerised touchscreen tasks for primates (and humans) but I am very interested in ‘normal’ animals not involved in cognitive research being given access to AI enabled computerised devices. There’s a lot of ethical, philosophical and stakeholder related work that deserves pressing attention.