Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Nicola S. Clayton

2007; Elsevier BV; Volume: 17; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.cub.2007.03.010

1879-0445

Nicola S. Clayton,

Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior

Nicola Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Clare College. Nicky studies the development and evolution of cognition, and the questions she address are informed by an understanding of biology and psychology. Her work has challenged many of the common-held assumptions that only humans can plan for the future and reminisce about the past, and that only humans can understand other minds as well as other times. Nicky's work is mainly with members of the corvid family (including jackdaws, rooks and jays as well as crows), but includes comparative studies of crows and apes, and more recently young children. This work has led to a radical re-evaluation of animal cognition, and raises important issues about the evolution of cognition, ideas that she has developed with her husband, Nathan Emery, in a recent review in Science on the convergent evolution of cognition in corvids and apes. Have you always been interested in biology? I have always been fascinated by birds, especially by how their minds work and why they engage in such amazing behavioural displays. Watching birds triggers my two passions: science and dance! When I started at university, I had the choice of reading either Zoology or Psychology. In the end I chose Zoology because of my interest in bird behaviour, but I continued to be interested in Psychology. I also continue to be passionate about dance, and spend much of my ‘spare time’ dancing, from salsa and tango to ballet and jazz. I find many similarities between science and dance. Like dance, science is extremely hard work, but it is equally rewarding and extremely enjoyable. There is an elegance about good science which, like dance, comes from discipline, determination, dedication and perseverance. What happened next? I read Zoology at Pembroke College, Oxford from 1981 to 1984, and that experience reinforced my interest in bird behaviour, especially learning, memory and cognition, so I went to work with Peter Slater at the University of St. Andrews for my PhD, studying how zebra finches learn their songs and specifically how the young pupils choose their tutors. After that, I obtained a Royal Society post-doctoral fellowship at Bielefeld University (in Germany) before coming back to Oxford to work with John Krebs, applying the techniques developed for studying birdsong learning to study the ontogeny of food-caching behaviour, and the concomitant development of the hippocampus and spatial memory. I did not finally fledge the nest until 1995, when I moved to the University of California Davis. I came back to the UK in 2000 as a Lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge. In 2002, I was lucky enough to be made a Reader in Comparative Cognition and was appointed to a Personal Professorship in 2005. What do you enjoy about research — are you happy with this career choice? Absolutely! I love the creativity and curiosity involved in studying cognition, particularly in animals whose minds and brains may be so different from our own, and the challenge of finding ways to tap into their intelligence in the absence of language. I also love the freedom of being able to choose what topics to focus on and when, the enthusiasm for discovering new things, and the intellectual rigour of thinking carefully and critically about problems. The fact that I can teach and interact with students as well as colleagues is also a big plus. Has anyone in particular had a major influence on the development of your scientific career? John Krebs, or should I say Lord Krebs of Barnet (the son of Hans Krebs of Krebs cycle fame), has played a major role in my academic life, ever since my undergraduate days. He has always been there for me whenever I needed advice, and he gave me the courage and confidence to do things my way, so I am more grateful to him than words can say. Aside from his seemingly endless scientific wisdom, his future vision and his razor-sharp clarity of thought, he was the epitome of ‘healthy minds have healthy bodies’, in his case by combining science with a love for running, thereby endorsing my combination of science and dance. Do you have a hero? I have two heroes, Bill Thorpe and David Attenborough. William Thorpe was the founding director of the Sub-department of Animal Behaviour at Madingley, at the University of Cambridge, and he started the field of avian cognition, particularly the study of birdsong learning, although Bill's own research was not restricted to birds. I don't think he had the recognition he deserved, perhaps because of his more retiring nature, and perhaps because some of his ideas were ahead of the times. I still use his book ‘Learning and Instinct in Mammals’ now. He said so many sensible things about the brain as well as behaviour, and many of the things he said have inspired my own research programme. My other hero is Sir David Attenborough for his role in advancing the public understanding of science, through his wonderful television programmes on various aspects of the natural history of animal behaviour. David was a part II Zoology student at Clare College, Cambridge and is now an honorary fellow there. I use many video clips from his series to add colour to my lectures on animal behaviour and comparative cognition. Do you have a favourite book? There are two books which really inspired me, both semi-populist books that I first read in the summer before I started university, and both of which I have read many times since. The first was Richard Dawkins ‘The Selfish Gene’ for its engaging descriptions of a wide range of animal behaviours, and what progress can be made from an understanding of evolutionary principles. The second was Konrad Lorenz's ‘King Soloman's Ring’, which among other things sparked my curiosity for the corvids. Where next? In the last decade we have seen a major revolution in our understanding of animal intelligence. It has been known for many years that chimpanzees share some of the abilities that we consider characteristic of human intelligence, and the common assumption was that intelligence evolved once in humans and perhaps our closest great-ape relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos. But the finding that corvids are also intelligent challenges this assumption — the existence of intelligence in these two distantly related groups of animals implies that it must have arisen independently. This is certainly a research paradigm that my husband, Nathan Emery, and I wish to pursue, by comparing corvids and apes directly. I also want to expand the paradigm in two ways. The first is by returning to my routes and studying behavioural development, particularly the ontogeny of cashing, in relation to the developmental emergence of various cognitive feats, from object permanence to mental time travel and ‘theory of mind’ (an understanding of other minds and other times). The second is, by expanding the work to include cognitive development in children.