How Do You Study Elephants? The Start of My Journey

I chose to study elephants for my dissertation research. But how does one even set something like that up? Where do you begin?

I recently gave a talk to undergraduate students in wildlife studies. I talked about my past research including my dissertation research on forest elephants, but also more recent research on camera traps. At the end of the talk though, I got a lot of questions about how I set up more elephant research. 

I thought now would be a great time to talk about that. In this episode, I talk about how I got started and why I chose forest elephants. 

Specifically, we’ll go over:

• Why did I choose to research elephants? And forest elephants specifically?
• What makes elephants so interesting? Why did I find them fascinating?
• African savanna elephant social structure and behavior
• The different existing elephant species
• How I decided my research topic when I could study almost anything I wanted
• African forest elephant social structure
• My three research questions

For full show notes, click here: https://stephanieschuttler.com/study-elephants/

Let’s Connect:

Subscribe to my YouTube channel to learn about the coolest animals and get my tips about careers in wildlife biology, science communication, and more: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7KlOYUv8lxU3MG4sfxaLzA?

I’d love to meet you. Connect with me on social media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FancyScientist

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fancy_scientist/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fancyscientist/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/fancyscientist/pins/