Dr. Naomi Latham
Naomi wanted to work with animals since she was very young, initially planning to be a vet. However, she became interested in why animals behave as they do, and so did a degree in Zoology instead, at Nottingham University. There she worked on some research projects that fed her interests further (looking at the diet of Egyptian spiny mice in the Sinai desert, and the behaviour of surprisingly fast-moving giant tortoises in the Seychelles). After graduating she spent two years working in IT, but her heart still lay with studying animal behaviour.  When she came across information about Georgia Mason’s group at Oxford – especially their study of stereotypies – she was intrigued.  Like many, she had often seen stereotypies (in zoo animals, and her pet hamsters), but had never realised the complex processes that underlie their performance.  She won a UFAW Research Training Scholarship, to fund her Ph.D. with Georgia, working on ‘bar-mouthing’ and other stereotypies in laboratory mice. She is now juggling a post-doc. at Oxford University (see ‘What we do’) with looking after two small children and writing up papers from her Ph.D. In the future she hopes to assess and improve other aspects of laboratory animals’ lives, such as unnatural social groupings, behavioural restriction, and pain following invasive procedures. 

Aside from her publications with Georgia (see Publications), Naomi has three book chapters in
press:

1. Latham, N. (in press) Brief Introduction to Welfare Assessment: A 'Toolbox' of Techniques. In: UFAW Handbook of Laboratory Animal Management (edited by R. Hubrecht)
2. Würbel, H., Burn, C. and Latham N. (in press) The Behaviour of (Laboratory) Mice and Rats, in a forthcoming CABI volume edited by P. Jensen.
3. Latham, N. (in press) The Mouse, in a volume on 'exotic pet behaviour' edited by V. Tyne).

Dr. Lee Neil - Honorary Group member
Lee is an NSERC post-doctoral fellow based at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. She moved to Ontario after a completing an animal welfare PhD with Professor Dan Weary at UBC. Lee co-teaches ANSC*4090, Applied Animal Behaviour, with Georgia (see ‘Courses taught’), and also comes to our group meetings whenever she can. Lee Neil's Publication list.

Megan Jones
Megan lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Her early postgraduate research in Zoology and Psychology was primate based, and investigated foraging behaviour in zoo captive baboons, the consequences of environmental restriction on abnormal behaviour in chimpanzees, and the effect of enrichment on zoo-visitor perception of baboon and chimpanzee welfare. In 2005 Megs enrolled for her PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand under Prof. Neville Pillay and, in 2006, Georgia was “coerced” (though she claims she is happy about this) into co-supervising her project.  Her thesis investigates how the early environment, in combination with individual differences in personality, predisposes or protects animals from developing stereotypy (see “What We Do” section).  In her spare time, Megan rides her (stereotypic!) horse, repetitively and invariantly falls off her mountain bike, prevents her mice from enriching her cats, and is walked and trained in agility by her three rambunctious Labradors and one manic Golden Retriever puppy. 

Aside from her publications with Georgia (see Publications), Megan has two publications:

1. Jones, M., van Lierop, M., Pillay, N., 2008. All a mother's fault? Transmission of stereotypy in striped mice Rhabdomys. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 115, 82-89.
2. Jones, M. & Pillay, N. (2004). Foraging in captive hamadryas baboons: implications for enrichment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 88, 101-110.

1. Young EJ, Lipina TL, Tam E, Bechard AR, Mandel A, Chambers J, Fletcher P, Mount H, Clapcote SJ, Roder JC, and Osborne LR. (2008). Reduced fear and aggression and altered serotonin metabolism in Gtf2ird1 transcription factor-targeted mice. Genes, Brain, Behavior 7(2):224-34
2. Perez GI, Jurisicova A, Wisa L, Lipina T, Kanisek M, Bechard A. Takai Y, Hunt P, Roder J, Grynpas M, Tilly JL. (2007). Absence of the pro-apoptotic Bax protein extends fertility and alleviates post-menopausal health complications in aging females.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104(12):5229-34.
3. Clapcote SJ, Lazar NL, Bechard AR, Wood GA, & Roder JC. (2005). NIH Swiss and Black Swiss mice have retinal degeneration and performance deficits in cognitive tests. Comparative Medicine 55(4):310-6.
4. Clapcote SJ, Lazar N, Bechard A, & Roder, JC. (2005). Effects of the rd1 mutation and host strain on hippocampal learning in mice.  Behavioral Genetics 35(5):591-601.
5. Abramow-Newerly W, Lipina T, Abramow-Newerly M, Kim D, Bechard AR, Xie G, Clapcote SJ, Roder JC.  (2006). Methods to rapidly and accurately screen a large number of ENU mutagenized mice for abnormal motor phenotypes.  Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Other Motor Neuron Disorders 7(2):112-8.

Jamie Dallaire
Jamie grew up in Trois-Rivières, Quebec and learned to enjoy nature as a boy scout. His long-standing fascination with primates pushed him to pursue studies in biology, obtaining his B.Sc. from McGill University, in Montreal, with a particular focus on behaviour and ecology. That said, his only experience with primates thus far comes from centrifuging howler dung, but he did work with chipmunks, weakly electric fish, and high school math students for a while. Considering he wanted to do something “useful”, he was delighted when he discovered that there are actually people who study animal welfare. So, he decided to become one of them. Jamie won an NSERC PGS-M scholarship, and started his Master’s degree here in Guelph in September of 2008. He will be investigating what it is about certain individuals from impoverished captive environments that lets them recover quite well in rehabilitation programs using environmental enrichment, while other individuals fare very poorly. To answer these questions, he’ll be looking at attempts to eliminate stereotypic behaviour in Asiatic black bears rescued from bile farms and/or in mink raised on experimental farms.

Ken Yau
Ken was born in North York and raised in possibly every area of Toronto. He grew up in a family with a strong interest and influence in the arts, and they were certain he would do the same. However, determined to take a different route, he became  interested in becoming a veterinarian and volunteered most of his summers in local clinics. In pursuit of being a vet, he finished a BSc. (Hons) in Animal Biology at the University of Guelph -- but along the way he was side-tracked and became increasingly fascinated by animal welfare, and the issues still prevalent even in such developed countries like Canada. This led to a project with Georgia exploring the development of stereotypic behaviour. He worked as a research assistant, spending the summer of 2008 in Michigan observing mink in enriched “palaces” (designed and created by Maria Díez León) and assessing individual differences in how they utilize the enrichments given to them. This made him the latest addition to the Mink Watchers team -- one forever jinxing Georgia’s research students as they try to cross the US border (for some mysterious reason, Ken seems to be on a ‘watch list’ and sets off alarms each time he tries to enter America). Ken will start an MSc. with Georgia in Jan. 2009.

Heather Smale
Heather majored in Animal Biology at the University of Guelph, and just finished her undergraduate degree in December, 2008. She worked as a summer student for Georgia and Maria in 2006 and 2007, and soon became utterly indispensible, not least for her abilities to watch hours and hours of videos of mink mothers licking their newly born kits (black mink in dark nestboxes) without going crazy. Currently she is helping collect activity data on a local mink farm for Becky’s project. Heather spends her free time working with horses, or playing music (she was a music minor). Ultimately, her goal is to enter vet school and pursue a career as a large/production animal vet, hopefully specializing in cardiology…. or maybe a do Masters in Behaviour and Welfare...or perhaps (probably) both. Heather also loves sunsets, long walks on the beach and poking dead things with a stick.