How is animal behavioral psychology different from what people think of when they think of psychology?
I think when most people think of psychology, they think of the human mind and human behavior. With non-human animal research, you can often test ideas, in terms of experimental manipulation, that might not be possible to test with humans. Q: Can you give an example of how that might be used in your field? It’s not the kind of work I do, but a big component of animal behavior research is behavioral neuroscience – looking at the neural or neurophysiological basis of behavior. Q: What first got you interested in this type of work? I stumbled upon a class in animal behavior. From the first minute, I realized that’s what I wanted to do. It was basically taking a class from a professor that got me hooked. Q: What kind of training or education is important for getting involved in animal behavioral psychology? It depends on what you want to do. If you want to wind up at a research university or college, you pretty much need to get a Ph.D. There are some other career directions you could take
