The Potomac Schools speaker series, Dr. Diana Reiss, The Dolphin in the Mirror
Free lecture on animal cognition, identity, understanding and communication
Diana Reiss
The Dolphin in the Mirror
Our speaker will be renowned cognitive psychologist, biologist and animal activist Dr. Diana Reiss.She will discuss her long-term ground-breaking research into animal cognition and explore with us the nature of animal identity, understanding and communication.Dr. Diana Reiss is a cognitive psychologist, marine mammal scientist, and Professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College, CUNY and in the Animal Behavior and Comparative Psychology Doctoral program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is a research associate at the National Aquarium where she directs a research program investigating dolphin cognition and communication, and she is a research associate at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, where she investigates elephant cognition. She and her students also conduct field studies on communication and behavior in wild dolphins in Bimini and Belize.
Dr. Reiss’s research focuses on dolphin cognition, communication, comparative animal cognition, and the evolution of intelligence. She pioneered the use of underwater keyboards with dolphins to investigate their cognitive and communicative abilities and to provide them with more degrees of choice and control. She and her colleagues demonstrated that bottlenose dolphins and Asian elephants possess the rare ability for mirror self-recognition previously thought to be restricted to humans and great apes. Her efforts also involve the rescue and rehabilitation of stranded marine mammals including the successful rescue of the renowned Humphrey the humpback whale in the San Francisco Bay waters.
Dr. Reiss’s advocacy work in conservation and animal welfare has focused on the protection of dolphins in the tuna-fishing industry and on efforts to bring an end to the killing of dolphins in the drive hunts in Japan that were exposed in 2009’s Oscar-winning film The Cove. Dr. Reiss’s work has been featured in hundreds of articles in international and national journals, science magazines, television segments and features, a recent TED talk, and newspaper articles. Her book, The Dolphin in the Mirror, was released in the fall of 2011.
Location:Engelhard Performing Arts CenterThe Potomac School1301 Potomac School RoadMcLean, VA 22101
Map link:
Date:Thursday, April 10th, 2014
The evening's schedule:5:15 PM - 6:15 PM free light refreshments6:15 PM - 7:15 PM lecture7:15 PM - 8:15 PM follow-up discussion and questions
Free dedicated parking on site
RSVPCort Morgan, AB 1980