Spit and Twitches: The Animal Cognition Podcast

Lynne completed a BA at Algoma University in 1995 and quickly realized that she needed more out of academia. She went back to Algoma for two more years to complete a thesis and other courses she needed to move on to graduate studies. After a lot of support and encouragement from her undergraduate mentors (including a certain podcast host), Lynne went on to complete a PhD in Jeff Galef’s social learning lab at McMaster University where she got rats drunk so that they could get other rats drunk. After a post-doctoral fellowship at McMaster and SUNY Binghamton, Lynne joined the Department of Psychology at MacEwan University in 2003. It had been her goal to have a career at a teaching-focused university like her alma mater, so the fit at MacEwan has been ideal. Lynne is known for engaging classes with lots of hands-on learning, and has earned a couple of awards for her efforts. Her annual field school in animal learning (affectionately known by students as “bear camp”) provides students with insights about training and husbandry for captive animals.  Lynne’s research and scholarly work has also focused on students and their learning. She’s a co-author of a popular textbook for learning and behaviour, and her research projects are designed to train students in research rather than to build an enviable CV. In fact, her CV resembles a patchwork quilt with topics including human mate choice, personality, dog greeting behaviour in dog parks, and authentic assessment techniques for undergraduate students. Her most recent project involved a captive bear who needed to deal with his past.  Outside of work, Lynne’s got a lot of hobbies and interests. She fosters and trains dogs for a local animal rescue, travels whenever she and her partner Paul can manage it, and is usually planning at least one trip/tattoo/music festival/home renovation at all times. When she retires she would like to become a pro wrestling manager, preferably for a heel.mp3 download

Jess received her Bachelors in Psychology with Honors in 2007 from the University of Kentucky. She subsequently earned her MS (2010) and Ph.D. (2013) in Experimental Psychology, both completed in Thomas Zentall’s laboratory at the University of Kentucky. She was a Lecturer of Psychology at the University of Florida from 2013-2017, and at Georgia Southern University from 2017-2020. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the department of psychology at Auburn University at Montgomery. Her research is in the Cognitive-Behavioral area and centers mainly on decision-making processes and suboptimal choice behavior across species. Her work explores the various conditions under which certain choices occur as well as how aspects, such as personality traits and past reinforcement history, play a role in choice behavior. One of her favorite things about being a faculty member is having the opportunity to introduce students to research and to help them navigate their career path. In addition to mentoring undergraduate researchers in her laboratory, she teaches classes in behavior analysis, cognition, and psychological careers. In 2025, she won the Auburn University at Montgomery’s Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor Award. Jess was a program committee chair for the American Psychological Association Division 6 meeting in 2026 and is currently the President of the Comparative Cognition Society. Away from work, Jess is a mother of three who loves coffee, nature, and watching college basketball and football (War Eagle and Go Cats!).mp3 download

Wait, I think this might be the first Dave on the podcast other than, well, you know....Dave got his B.A. in Neuroscience from Franklin & Marshall College in 2004, where he worked with rats, capuchins, and macaque monkeys. He then completed an M.A. (2006) and Ph.D. (2010) at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied in Aaron Blaisdell’s Comparative Cognition Lab examining the control of behavioral variability. After receiving his Ph.D. he spent three years teaching and doing research at UCLA, working with rats, pigeons, and hermit crabs. In 2012, he received a tenure-track appointment at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA, where he is now a Professor of Psychological Science. He teaches courses in learning, neuroscience, and research methods, and runs his department’s animal research laboratory with its invertebrate and rat vivaria. He is interested in and has published work on basic behavioral processes. He has also published work on theoretical and philosophical matters, specifically as regards Skinnerian radical behaviorism, to which he was a convert after leaving UCLA. He’d like to think he’s known around his department as a friendly killjoy.Off-campus, he enjoys Chicago Cubs baseball, going to the movies, and homebrewing odd and time-intensive beers. mp3 download

Tanya's research is at the intersection of behavioural ecology, evolution, and animal and plant cognition. The main questions they ask revolves around why and how organisms make the decisions they do and how personality, experiences, and environment impact these decisions. This research is both multi-taxa and multi-methods, spanning empirical investigations of nest-building flexibility in zebra finches during their Undergraduate and Masters at Western University, group decision-making in zebrafish and guppies with manipulated personality compositions, and theoretical modelling of the impact of personality in fruit fly populations for their PhD at Wilfrid Laurier University. Most recently, Tanya has had the opportunity to construct a theoretical framework of what studying plant information processing should look like as a postdoc at the University of Alberta, along with designing empirical experiments to test the framework.  Tanya plans to continue this line of research in their relatively new position at CUE and is excited to see how the different branches of plant behaviour compare to what we know about animal behaviour. We talked about a lot of stuff, we made fun of Noam a bit, ok, maybe that was just me, and we of course did a deep dive on Tanya's plant cognition work.mp3 download

Look, I've been waiting to do this one for quite a while.Hell, I'm pretty sure I applied for this sabbatical so I could interview Madeleine.A bit about Maddie:Madeleine Brodbeck completed her BSc in psychology at Algoma University in Sault Ste Marie, ON in 2015 (I was there for a lot of it, well all of it really I suppose).  Maddie then moved on to the University of Western Ontario and the Advanced Facility for Avian Research (AFAR).  At AFAR she worked under the supervision of Scott MacDoguall-Shackelton and David Sherry.  Her PhD work focussed on brain regions associated with electromagnetic field perception in songbirds.  Her MSc work was on memory in brown headed cowbirds (which she is revisiting, stay tuned).She currently works as a research assistant and lab manager for the quantitative linguistics group at the University of Tübingen in Germany.In her non science time she loves travelling, cooking (food in general really) and video games.We talked about science, and some not science, as well as stuff and things.  (I quite clearly do these writeups before the interview, in fact, most of it is written by the guest).mp3 download