Profile

I was born in Hong Kong, a city that has many skyscrapers, good food, and …people!

My first two jobs were more human-orientated – I worked with kids with Autism, ADHD and learning disability. I also worked with older people who had dementia or impaired cognitive performance.

However, I prefer to be able to see the blue sky and wildlife, plus I am not afraid of moving to new places and meeting new people, and ergo, I moved to the UK for my study and work for many years. Because of my work, I also traveled to and stayed at many places, to name a few, Portugal, Finland, USA, Japan, Germany. I am currently living in Spain!

I am an open-minded person – I love intellectual conversations that would allow me understand the mind itself. This makes me embrace people from regardless of their sex, age, race etc.

You may wonder how do we, biologists and psychologists, work with animals. There is no secret and indeed is not much different from how you build connection with a person. All we do is to make an individual trust us by being a reliable person! We also have to be flexible because, just like humans, non-human animals have their own life style (e.g. waking up and sleeping time). For example, some squirrels are early birds, like to work in the morning and in order to see them, I have to wake up early, too (sometimes as early as 4am! but this is not difficult because you could take a nap later!)

Squirrels and I are BFF because I will be staying in the same spot at the same time when I am testing their IQ in the wild, look! this is a grey squirrel, Einstein🙂 (left) and a red squirrel, Nibble (right).

After I gain the trust from squirrels, I will give them some problems that require them to get an out-of-reach hazelnut. I designed boxes like the puzzle box (top) to see whether they could solve a problem successfully, how persistent they are, how many ways they tried to solve the problem, how much time would they need to learn the successful solution etc

or boxes like the generalisation box (bottom) to see whether squirrels could apply the same successful solution when solving a similar but different problem!

Currently, I am working with different species of parrots. This is an exciting move because parrots are expected to be clever animals :D! BUT, are their problem solving and thinking pattern similar to squirrels? to do this, I am giving lots of IQ test to parrots that have been used in squirrels – we will see!!

My typical day is like riding on a roller coaster 😁

Quiet time —

Starting with a good cup of coffee and toasts @5.30am! Think of three things to achieve for the day!

Head to the uni, say hello to my squirrels and bees @7am (squirrels and bees start working early)! Telling them that I will work with them that day and hope they will cooperate during the experiment.

Peak time —

Teaching and lots of meetings (during term time) @9am-1pm or run experiments with squirrels/bees.

Quiet time —

Lunch @1.15-1.45pm

Writing and thinking @1.45-3pm

Feeding animals (nuts and seeds for squirrels, syrup and pollens for 🐝) @3-4pm

Peak time —

Run experiment @4pm-6pm

Quiet time —

Analyse data, read literatures, more writing @6.15-8pm

Dinner + TV news time 8-8.30pm

Yoga @9-10pm

Shower and sleep no later than 11.30pm