Mya
Thompson
2005-2006 CSIP Fellow
Research
Interest:
Neurobiology and Behavior
I
am interested in learning about the social lives of animals
through studies of vocal communication. My research focuses
on what the vocalizations of elephants can tell us about
their social system. Over what distances can family members
stay in touch? How do males and females find each other
to mate? Do elephants experience social contagion like
humans do in crowded situations?
As
a CSIP fellow, I hope to bring the theme of animal communication
into science classrooms. Because each species perceives
the world through senses tuned specifically for their
survival, any investigation of other animal’s sensory
worlds forces us to consider life from their point of
view. The process of stepping outside human reference
points is an important skill in science. The world of
bioacoustics holds sensory surprises such as bat and dolphin
echolocation above the level of our hearing and whale
and elephant vocalizations made well below our level of
hearing. In my research, most of the discoveries are made
not in the field but back at the lab once the audio and
video recording are closely examined. For this reason,
many interesting questions about elephant communication
can be tailored for discrete classroom projects using
recordings of wild elephants from my field site in central
Africa. In my experience visiting local classrooms, students
are captivated by the study of elephants. I welcome the
opportunity to transform initial excitement about a charismatic
animal into longer-term classroom investigations.