Profile

I am interested in how animals behave and how they learn new things. Just like you or me, animals learn new things, like which foods they can eat, who they should be friends with (or avoid) and what is safe to play with (and what is dangerous).

I have worked with apes, monkeys, lemurs and children in zoos and sanctuaries (and nursery schools) around the world researching when they learn new things, how they learn this information and if they pass their knowledge onto others. We know humans are really good at learning and teaching, but how good are monkeys? Well, sometimes they’re really good and sometimes they aren’t. I am interested in finding out why!

When I am doing research, I give the monkeys or apes a puzzle to solve and I video how they do it. If they solve it, they find some food. I then spend a lot of time carefully watching the videos to find out how they have learned.

I work in a research centre in the middle of Edinburgh Zoo, so I walk to my office past flamingoes, Chinese mountain goats and chimpanzees. My office looks out into the monkey enclosures, where our capuchins and squirrel monkeys live. Usually the first thing that I do is put the kettle on and make some coffee – you need to be wide awake when you’re working with animals.

We have two research sessions each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The great thing about working at the zoo is that the visitors can see everything that we’re doing. If I am doing research, I need to set up the puzzle that the monkeys have to solve and the video cameras to record it. The monkeys really love our puzzles, because they get some food and another thing to play with (they’re usually very curious).

When I am not doing research, I am usually watching back the videos and recording what happened. I am really lucky that my job also involves chatting with zoo visitors, so I often pop up into the visitor areas to answer questions that people have about the research that’s going on.