For Students

Our group members are involved in various courses of the BSc and MSc Biology programmes at Leiden University, the Netherlands. We are also each year looking for enthusiastic BSc and MSc students to do their research project internships at our lab. See below an overview of internship possibilities and the courses we teach at Leiden University:

Internships:

Rhythmicity in behavioural displays of chimpanzees. 2 BSc & 1 MSc students (All taken)

Vocal variation in rose-ringed parakeets. 2 BSc & 1 MSc students (All taken)

Dissonance and consonance preferences in zebra finches. 2 BSc students (All taken)

Teaching courses

Gedragsbiologie 1 (first year BSc animal behaviour course)

This courses teaches first year Biology students the fundamentals of behaviour biology, like Tinbergen rules. Students will also get experience with conducting behaviour observations in local parks.

Gedragsbiologie 2 (second year BSc animal behaviour course)

The second year animal behaviour course dives deeper into theories about causation, development, function and the evolution of animal behaviour. Furthermore, students will conduct their own behaviour experiment in a trip to Avifauna Bird park. This course is coordinated by Judith Varkevisser and Michelle Spierings.

Minor Human Evolution: Origins of human anatomy, physiology and behaviour

We coordinate (Judith Varkevisser and Michelle Spierings) the behaviour part of this module of the minor Human Evolution. In this course, we compare the behaviour and cognitive skills between both primates and more distantly related species. Students will also be taught to make observatons of social behaviour of primates through visits at Artis Zoo and the Biomedical Primate Research Centre.

MSc Animal Cognition course

We are involved in parts of the MSc course Animal Cognition.