You are here

Animal Behaviour and Cognition

Project-Based PhD Admissions 2018-2019

Programme Head: Sindhu Radhakrishna

The Animal Behaviour and Cognition Programme has, over the last nineteen years, specialised in investigating the biology of a wide range of nonhuman species, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, particularly primates and elephants, as well as different aspects of human-wildlife interactions and animal studies. Our research encompasses a variety of perspectives including ecology, behaviour, cognition, genetics, and conservation, which we explore through the use of a variety of observational, experimental, mathematical, computational and philosophical methods. The Programme currently consists of four research scholars, several short-term research associates and a number of collaborators from the Schools of Social Sciences and of Humanities in NIAS and from more than fifteen institutions across India, Japan, UK, USA and Australia. It is one of the few groups in the world working on the behavioural ecology and conservation of nocturnal primates in the wild, the only research group in the country working in the areas of social cognition, communication and culture in any animal species, including cognition, personality and decision-making in fish, and the only research team in India that has been monitoring a primate population and tracking the life-history strategies of more than 1,500 individually identified animals continuously over fifteen years, as well as credited with the discovery of a new primate species, the Arunachal macaque, over the last sixty years.

Junior Research Fellow and Research Assistant (Last Date to Apply: 30 September 2018 New!

Anindya Sinha Professor	Binoy V.V Assistant Professor	Paula Pebsworth Post Doctoral Associate
Samira Agnihotri Post Doctoral Associate	Sindhu Radhakrishna Professor and Dean	Uddalak Tathaga... Student

Sinha, A. & Vijayakrishnan, S., 2017. Primates in Urban Settings. In The International Encyclopedia of Primatology. The International Encyclopedia of Primatology. Wiley and Sons Inc, pp. 1-8.
Sinha, A., 2017. Scio Ergo Sum: Knowledge of the Self in a Nonhuman Primate. Journal of the Indian Institute of Science, 97(4), pp. 567–582. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41745-017-0043-3.
Barua, M. & Sinha, A., 2017. Animating the urban: an ethological and geographical conversation. Social & Cultural Geography . Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649365.2017.1409908.
Gupta, S. & Sinha, A., 2016. Not here, there! Possible referential gesturing during allogrooming by wild bonnet macaques, Macaca radiata. Animal Cognition. Available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-016-1012-3.
Sharma, N. et al., 2016. Watering holes: The use of arboreal sources of drinking water by Old World monkeys and apes. Behavioural Processes, 129, pp.18-26. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/1146/.
V, B.V., R, K. & A., S., 2015. Sensory cues employed for the acquisition of familiarity-dependent recognition of a shoal of conspecifics by climbing perch (Anabas testudineus Bloch). Journal of Biosciences, 40, pp.225-232.
Binoy, V.V., R, K. & A., S., 2015. Sensory cues employed for the acquisition of familiarity-dependent recognition of a shoal of conspecifics by climbing perch (Anabas testudineus Bloch). Journal of Biosciences, 40, pp.225-232.
Menon, S., Sinha, A. & Sreekantan, B.V., 2014. Interdisciplinary perspectives on consciousness and the self, New Delhi: Springer. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/652/.
Radhakrishna, S., Binoy, V.V. & Kurup, A., 2014. The culture of environmental education: insights from a citizen science experiment in India. Current Science, 107, pp.176–178. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/622/.
Radhakrishna, S., Huffman, M.A. & Sinha, A., 2013. The macaque connection: Cooperation and conflict between humans and macaques, New York: Springer Verlag. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/337/.
Kumara, H.N. & Radhakrishna, S., 2013. Evaluation of census techniques to estimate the density of slender Loris (Loris lydekkerianus) in Southern India. Current Science, 104, pp.1083–1086. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/629/.
Kumara, H.N. & Radhakrishna, S., 2013. Evaluation of census techniques to estimate the density of slender Loris (Loris lydekkerianus) in Southern India. Current Science, 104, pp.1083–1086. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/623/.
Sharma, N. et al., 2012. Trends in extinction and persistence of diurnal primates in the fragmented lowland rainforests of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley, Northeastern India. Oryx, 46, pp.308–311. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/546/.
Karmakar, S. & Binoy, V.V., 2012. Tools as non-elaborated aesthetic form. Science and Culture, 78, pp.347–350. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/481/.
Binoy, V.V., Roshan, K.S. & Rakesh, V.B., 2012. Occurrence of Kryptoglanis shajii, an enigmatic subterranean-spring catfish (Siluriformes, Incertae sedis) in the channels of paddy fields. Current Science, 102, p.161. Available at: http://eprints.nias.res.in/292/.