Animal behavior and evolutionary biology: Michela Mastellone-Schottman '11
November 30 2009
"I spent a year working with baboons in South Africa between high school and college,
and I knew when I came to Bennington
that I wanted to study animal behavior and evolutionary biology. My classes
here have let me explore that interest so when an opportunity in the field
comes along, I can take it.
"For example: In my sophomore year, I went to Belize for my Field Work Term. I was at an animal care center where I worked primarily with jaguars born in captivity—unreleasable, but still dangerous, animals. I had a lot of time to observe the jaguars, and I really appreciated those classes in animal behavior which taught me what to look for and how to pose questions for myself. This made it a much more focused experience.
Michela working with primates in South Africa
"I've done quite a few research projects through my science classes—animal behavior, physiology, microbiology. Working with [biology faculty member] Betsy Sherman has been great for that. In one of her classes in my first year here, I did research on green anoles. Dealing with the animals themselves was an issue because they kept biting! They weren't behaving as I expected, so I had to keep adjusting my plans. And that's how it works when you're doing research with real animals. You keep coming up with new ideas, trying new things: ‘Maybe if I add heat to this, then the anoles will turn green.' Learning to pose a question can be the most complicated part of research. Once you come up with your question, you can come up with a number of ways to approach it.
"The faculty have really supported me in incorporating my primary interest into many of my classes."
"The faculty have really supported me in incorporating my primary interest into many of my classes. In my social science classes, Ron Cohen has helped me explore the relationships in behavior between human and nonhuman primates. In microbiology, I think about how these tiny bacteria are incorporated into the animals I'm interested in. It all relates. I've taken a bunch of ecology and evolution classes with Kerry Woods, and next term I'm taking a research class with him.
"Music is another important part of what I study here. I play cello, and over the past two years I've done a lot of traditional music and small ensemble stuff with [music faculty member] John Kirk. It's a totally different kind of playing than what I grew up doing—classical, orchestral—and cellos are played so differently from fiddles, but John has been really open to it! He loves having the cello in the class, and it's taught me skills I've never had to know, like transposing music and improvising.
"Bennington has allowed me to go and explore in the field, and then come back and explore in the classroom."
Michela at the Belize Wildlife Care Center
Michela's Field Work Terms:
- First year: Boston Museum of Science, Boston, MA.
- Second year: Belize Wildlife Care Center, Belize.
- Third year: Animal shelter, Lowell, MA.
Explore more aspects of Michela's work at Bennington:
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