Recap summer 2014

Lots of things have happened since my last blog post in May. Maybe the most important thing is that we extended the group with three new wildcaught raven chicks. They all come from nests nearby - the closest only 800 metres away.
Meet Kalle, Embla and Hilda!

Kalle, Embla and Hilda

Although the nests were so close in range, the age of the chicks differed widely. I had been observing the nests a few times per week ever since the females started sitting on the nests, but as many nests are quite deep, and also located high up it's difficult to get a glimpse of the chicks in order to determine their age. The youngest was barely 2 weeks old, and we named him Kalle, since he looked like Donald Duck (Kalle Anka in Swedish) when he first arrived.

Kalle

The PhD students  - Ivo and Can- were busy all summer documenting the developmental stages of the young, which will later result in a paper on the cognitive development in raven chicks. At the moment all other ravens are also taking part in different studies on planning and physical cognition.

During summer, two new papers were published;  "The future of future-oriented cognition in non-humans: theory and the empirical case of the great apes" (Osvath & Martin-Ordas)
and
"Independent evolution of similar complex cognitive skills : the importance of embodieddegrees of freedom"(Osvath, Kabadayi & Jacobs)

Mathias also participated in the Social Brain Conference in Copenhagen, contributing with a poster on the contagious play study. The conference hosted several world leading experts on social cognition and its relation to the brain. The participants formed a mix of neurobiologists and animal cognition researchers - a fruitful combination.

After summer we welcomed a new member of the group - master student Russel Reiter. He will take several courses at the station, and most importantly write his master's thesis here on raven cognition.

The seminar room.

In mid October we had our yearly cleaning day of the station, and also the inauguration of the seminar room on the second floor - the "Hugin Hall". When the department of Cognitive Science moved from Kungshuset to the new LUX-house a lot of furniture was left behind - enough to furnish the station's lecture hall, so now we are ready for lectures, symposiums and courses!

The cosy corner.

//Helena