Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.
Title of course:
“The Science of Cats”
What prompted the idea for the course?
I’m an evolutionary biologist who has spent my career studying the evolution of small lizards in the Caribbean. I’m also a lifelong cat lover, but it never occurred to me to do anything scientific with house cats. They’re hard to study – ever tried to follow your cat around to see what they’re doing? And in contrast to amply studied lions, tigers and other wild felines, I was under the impression that there wasn’t any interesting research being conducted on the domestic representative of the cat clan, Felis catus.
Twelve years ago, I learned that I was completely wrong. Thanks to John Bradshaw’s book “Cat Sense” and the BBC’s “The Secret Life of the Cat,” I discovered that ailurologists were using the same cutting-edge methods – GPS tracking, genome sequencing, isotopic analysis – to study domestic cats that I use to study lizards and other researchers use with all manner of other creatures.
The future and its possibilities are something that you actively co-create with others. New research suggests that imagining together makes you closer and more connected to them in the here and now.