How many different experiments have you completed and what is your favourite?

Question: How many different experiments have you completed and what is your favourite?
- Keywords:
  experiment
Asked by feidhlimd2017 to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 8 Mar 2017.
- Carrie Ijichi answered on 8 Mar 2017:
  
  I mostly do studies, where I observe things and look for patterns, rather than experiments. my favourite is where I collected data from horses that went to the vet with an injury and measured how their personality affected how they behave when they’re in pain. We learnt that they were quite like humans because extroversion and neuroticism affected their pain behaviour. That was cool
- Ines Goncalves answered on 8 Mar 2017:
  
  hmm, hard question. I’ve done many experiments but not all of them are published. Some people would say that means they are not completed, but I did finish all the data collection, I just haven’t had the time to write them up. My favourite was the last study of my phd. It took me 2 years to find an oxygen probe that was small enough that I could insert into the brood pouch of pipefish males while they were brooding their embryos (basically, while they were pregnant). Because the embryos are enclosed in the pouch they don’t have access to the surrounding water and the oxygen in it, so I was interested in finding out how much oxygen the males provide to the embryos during development.
  Here’s a news article that was written on it: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/218/11/1615.1
- Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:
  
  I have done projects rather than experiments as such. The main projects have done are:
  – for my undergraduate I did a study looking at the differences in behaviour between two species of langur monkeys (red javan and purple faced)
  – for my masters I looked at sleep behaviour in Asian elephants in zoos
  – I worked on a project looking at a means of assessing elephant welfare through watching their behaviour – this is now being used by zoos in the UK and Ireland to monitor welfare
  – I am now currently looking at social behaviour in zoo elephants (although that is complete yet)
  
  I really love my current project I think because it has been the most in depth. But watching elephants sleeping, or watching elephants in their beds as my friend so sweetly described it was really really cute!
- Rupert Marshall answered on 10 Mar 2017:
  
  I have done quite a lot of experiments. Mainly I have done them on birds in the wild, although some were done by playing songs to birds in an aviary and I have also done some experiments using fish (no, not on fish songs). I have no idea how many experiments I have done – they don’t always work out. My favourite was a simple one when I played a great tit’s song over a loudspeaker and watched while another great tit flew down and sat on top of the speaker. It was looking for the bird singing the song it could hear. I liked it because it was such a quick and strong reaction, proving that birds do respond to song. It was at the study of my studies and gave me confidence that what I was doing might work.
- Cedric Tan answered on 14 Mar 2017:
  
  I think I stopped counting many years ago. Yet I based it on my thesis.
  
  7 major experiments for my PhD thesis, for which each major experiment consist of at least 4 smaller experiments, each taking 2 moths to 3 years to complete.
  
  As for experiments after PhD, maybe 10 major ones so far.
  
  My favorite has got to be the clouded leopard work:

Question: How many different experiments have you completed and what is your favourite?

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