We all wish for the superpower to understand what animals are communicating. This week, we are joined by biologist Mickey Pardo to discuss his work studying animal communication and social cognition in animals ranging from elephants to woodpeckers.
Mickey Pardo is a biologist specializing in animal communication, animal cognition, and wildlife conservation. He earned his PhD from the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where he studied vocal communication and social cognition in Asian elephants and Acorn Woodpeckers. He then completed a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Colorado State University, where he studied vocal communication in African elephants and made the discovery that elephants have names for one another. He is currently a postdoctoral associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where he is using audio recorders and AI to non-invasively monitor threatened bird populations in Southern California. Mickey regularly volunteers with Anonymous for the Voiceless and is an organizer with Pro-Animal Future, which is seeking to ban fur and slaughterhouses in Denver, CO, through ballot initiatives. He is also assisting the Nonhuman Rights Project as an elephant behavior consultant and has recently signed up as a mentor for Animal Activism Mentorship. Mickey has published multiple pro-animal op-eds and has a relatively new YouTube channel where he discusses studies on animal cognition and makes a scientific case for animal rights.
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