Symposium: How STRANGE are my animals?
When: November 18, 2025; 09:00-16:00
Where: University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 6, Room 205.
This course is also an official CUSO course: https://biologie.cuso.ch/ecology-evolution/dpee-activities
What is it about?
Various fields of research are concerned with assessing the behaviour of wild or captive animals, including comparative cognition, behavioural ecology, conservation biology, and the biomedical sciences. Behavioural research faces specific challenges, as many factors can affect the behavioural responses of the animals under study. The STRANGE framework was designed as a tool to detect, avoid, and report sampling biases and understand their contribution to reproducibility. It stands for a thorough description of all those factors that can potentially influence the responses in animal studies, which are: Social background, Trappability and self-selection, Rearing history, Acclimation and habituation, Natural changes in responsiveness, Genetic make-up, and Experience.
Invited Speakers:
Michael Webster
Christian Rutz
Ivana Jaric
Veronika Bókony
Hanno Würbel
Catherine Hobaiter
Organizers: Eva Ringler, Bernhard Voelkl
