CICASP | Center for International Collaboration and Advanced Studies in Primatology

Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.

The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the annual meetings of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology between July 19-21, 2014. The society's aims are to support a better understanding of human nature, particularly in the realm of cognition, through the lens of the animal mind; in other words, its members study the cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals to give clues about the evolution of our own considerable mental abilities.

This year's congress was held in Inuyama, hometown of the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute (KUPRI), and notably was conducted for the first time entirely in English. The president of the organizing committee this year was Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa of KUPRI, and there were an impressive number of speakers from around the world invited to participate and present at this event. As such, Andrew along with summer intern Sofi Bernstein decided to get on over there and talk with as many of these invitees as possible.

In this the fifth and final of five installments we hear from Dr. Raman Sukumar speak about his work in the conservation and ecology of Asian elephants in India and around the world. Topics of discussion include the major issues surrounding elephant conservation, such as human-elephant conflict, and what solutions are being developed to mitigate these issues and protect the future of the Asian elephant. Dr. Sukumar brings his vast knowledge and experience regarding elephants and tropical forest ecology into this interview, eloquently detailing the current and future problems facing Asian elephants, including the potential impacts of continued climate change dynamics. Dr. Sukumar is Professor in theCentre for Ecological Sciences of the Indian Institute of Science. Click here to visit his academic page. We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Raman Sukumar as well as all of our other guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology. Please do check out our other podcasts in this series, and make sure to browse our other podcast interviews with leading scientists in primatology and beyond.

Join us on The PrimateCast, and feel free to visit us at Facebook and Twitter and leave comments and feedback on this or any other podcast in the series. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

This podcast series was brought to you by CICASP, and was produced by Andrew MacIntosh with special assistance from summer intern Sofi Bernstein.