Professor Alex Thornton

About me:

My research group website can be found at www.wildcognitionresearch.com.

We seek to understand how the challenges faced by animals (including humans) in their natural environments shape their mental processes, how the ability to learn from others affects the behaviour of individuals and groups, and how culture itself evolves.

We incorporate approaches from evolutionary biology, psychology and anthropology and work on a range of different study systems. Our current work focuses on cognition and behaviour in wild jackdaws and the cognitive requirements of cumulative culture in humans.

I am a member of the Behaviour research group and the Human Biological and Cultural Evolution group.

Interests:

For further details of my research please visit my group website at: www.wildcognitionresearch.com.

My research uses a comparative approach to investigate two of the most important issues in behavioural biology: the evolution of intelligence and the biological origins of culture. The vast majority of work on these topics has been conducted on captive animals and so tells us little about the selective pressures operating in natural populations. In contrast, I use a variety of experimental, observational and statistical techniques to understand the factors driving cognitive evolution and cultural information transmission in the wild. My early research focused on cooperatively breeding meerkats in the Kalahari Desert. In 2012, I established the Cornish Jackdaw Project; now the world's largest dedicated field system for the study of corvid cognition. In addition to my research on wild animals, I also conduct experimental studies of cultural transmission in humans. My current research focuses on six main areas:

1. The role of sociality in driving cognitive evolution
2. The causes and consequences of individual variation in cognitive ability
3. The effects of social learning on individual and group behaviour
4. Collective behaviour in heterogeneous groups
5. The cognitive foundations of cumulative culture
6. Using cognitive research to promote effective conservation

Qualifications:

2007 PhD Zoology, University of Cambridge
2003 BA (Hons), University of Oxford

Career:
2021 - present Professor of Cognitive Evolution, Exeter
2018 - 2021 Associate Professor, Exeter
2015 - 2018 Senior Lecturer, Exeter
2012 - 2015 BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellow, Exeter
2010 - 2012 BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellow, Cambridge
2007 - 2010 Pembroke College Research Fellow, Cambridge
2003 - 2007 PhD, Cambridge