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NEWS
January 2012: my paper on play behavior in coatis has been accepted at the Brazilian Journal of Biology.
2 November 2011: my paper on bivouac-checking in ant-following birds is in the press at BBC Nature and AnimalWise. Oxford University Press also invited me to blog about the paper, which is now online.
14 October 2011: my ant-following bird paper came out in issue 22(6) of Behavioral Ecology today and will be in print next week. See the press release.
Logan CJ, O’Donnell S, and Clayton NS. 2011. A case of mental time travel in ant-following birds? Behavioral Ecology 22(6):1149-1153.
June 2011: another popular science article on corvid post-conflict affiliation is out in Natural History Magazine...
Logan CJ, Emery NJ, and Clayton NS. 2011. Squabbles and snuggles: how corvids handle conflict. Natural History Magazine, June, pp. 18-19.
RESEARCH INTERESTS: the evolution of social behavior and cognition.
Physical and social environments shape how animals behave and what they know about the world. Investigations of avian behavior and cognition are making ground-breaking discoveries: crows use tools, rooks cooperate to get food, and scrub-jays plan for the future. The field of behavior in wild animals contains many more treasures awaiting discovery. My own research has shown that coatis (a raccoon relative) play in safer environments, birds that follow army ants could be a new system for investigating memory and future planning (Logan et al. 2011), and corvids (birds in the crow family) support each other after fights (Logan 2010, Logan et al. 2011, Logan et al. submitted). Cognitive discoveries usually occur in laboratories which examine behaviour out of context, leaving many exciting questions about how natural selection has shaped these astonishingly sophisticated behaviours: how do animals use their cognition in the wild? Why did these abilities develop? I plan to study cognition in wild birds to help answer these questions.
EDUCATION
2008-2012 Ph.D. (Experimental Psychology) University of Cambridge
Gates Scholar, Supervisor: Professor Nicola Clayton, Advisor: Professor Sir Patrick Bateson
Thesis: the sociality, ontogeny, and function of corvid post-conflict affiliation.
2004 B.S. degree (Biology) The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, USA
Senior thesis: Play behavior in Nasua narica (white-nosed coati) in Costa Rica. Advisor: Dr. John T. Longino
2002 A.A. degree Skagit Valley College, Mount Vernon, WA USA
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