Dr Lisa Yon is an expert in captive animal welfare and works to improve the lives of and our understanding of wildlife living in captive & semi-captive homes around the world. She specialises in elephant intelligence & behaviour, and clearly loves them dearly. She serves on the board of many incredible organisations in the conservation world, including Frozen Ark - a global mission to cryogenically preserve endangered and ecosystem-critical species.
We talked about how elephants navigate and interpret their worlds, and their sophisticated social needs. We talked about what different players in conservation are doing to improve both their lives in captivity and in the wild. And we also talked about Lisa's work with biobanking (cryogenically freezing species for future regeneration projects) and the cooperation across the conservation industry to bring all these hopes to reality.
0:00 Lisa's career path
07:16 Wild Bull (male) elephants
13:16 Social teaching & learning
15:18 Communicating & infrasound
22:05 Research in their perception of their world
25:05 Cohabitation & herds
27:53 Navigating anthropological change
31:34 Improving captive wellbeing
35:30 Lisa's methods for assessing welfare
43:38 Are elephants getting 'tamer'?
49:07 Incentivising zoos re: welfare
54:12 Changing laws on captive welfare
56:14 Biobanking: Frozen Ark
01:03:15 Global network of biobanks
01:08:06 Cooperation in conservation
01:14:20 Conservation & zoonotic diseases
01:21:53 Elephants' strong social bonds
01:27:52 Will megafauna go extinct in the wild?
01:32:33 Lisa's next research project
This is a series of in-depth conversations with fascinating people, with loads to say about the current state of the world, everything that came before us, and everything that could be still to come.
You can also WATCH this episode on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/axBNUeUWnO4
We hope you enjoy.
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Lisa's Work: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vet/people/lisa.yon
Frozen Ark: https://www.frozenark.org
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