The May 2025 meeting will be a normal face-to-face one held at our usual venue. As COVID is still widespread in the community attendees should heed social distancing and good hygiene practice etc, and use their common sense and stay home if they have COVID symptoms. Mask wearing is recommended.
Please note that construction is still occurring around the Gabriel Drive parking area, and access to there is still not available. However, for 2025 the access gate and parking spot has changed. Entry and exit are now from the main gates on Melbourne Ave which automatically open and close. The Entry gate will be open, so please drive through and park in the main parking area to your left. Once parked proceed to the Multi-media Theatre (MMT) using the more direct route in the amended map that can be found via the link under LATEST NEWS on this web site.
This is roughly perpendicular to Melbourne Ave. Keep the Admin Hub, Reception and School Shop to your right and then proceed along a relatively flat and straight broad path keeping the columns to you left. Near to the end, go left up the 3 m wide steps, turn half right and you will find an open glass door. Go through this, across the empty room and past the toilets, and then enter the MMT either through the bottom MMT door or go further along and up the steps where you reach the usual entry door.
Though it is well lit, as it will be dark before and after the meeting, a torch for finding your way to the MMT and back to your car is recommended. The Exit gate is on a sensor pad, so please drive up to the gate and it will open for you.
The short presentation will be by Shefali Dorepalli, a Ph D student at the Research School of Biology at the ANU, on “The life and times of a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo: Age-related variation in cognition and behaviour.”
Behavioural change can occur across the lifetime of an individual. How and when do these changes occur? Do individuals develop certain abilities and skills over their juvenile period, and refine their social connections or movement patterns into adulthood? In this talk, Shefali will discuss her Ph D work, which seeks to understand age-related variation in cognition and behaviour in an iconic long-lived species, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita). She will talk about changes in social behaviour, movement patterns, motor skills and some fundamental cognitive abilities, inhibitory control and object permanence.
The main presentation will be by Professor Rob Heinsohn of the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the ANU and is entitled “Where music meets conservation: the incredible Palm Cockatoos of Cape York Peninsula.”
Australia’s Palm Cockatoos are well-known for their unique love of drumming. The males craft their own drum sticks or seed pod tools and bang rhythmically on their nest hollows to attract potential mates or to mark their territory. This talk will showcase this unique behaviour and how it may have evolved.