Hampshire College

Sarah Partan, associate professor of animal behavior, received her Ph.D. in animal behavior from the University of California, Davis; and her B.A. in biopsychology from Wesleyan University.

Her research interests are in the areas of animal social behavior and communication. She is particularly interested in multisensory signaling: how and why animals (including humans) combine signals from multiple sensory channels during communication. She has studied these and related questions in observational studies of wild African elephants; rhesus macaques; squirrels and lizards; and in controlled laboratory studies of birds and dolphins.

Sarah is currently creating mechanized animals that simulate animal displays to use in field playback experiments that combine the rigor of laboratory experiments with the natural setting of the field environment.

Affiliations
School of Cognitive Science

Recent Courses
Robot Term Projects (Spring 2012)
CS-0250: Animal Robot Field Tests (Spring 2012)
CS-0304: Advanced Animal Behavior Field Methods (Spring 2012)
CS-0261/LM-0261/IA-0261: Animals, Robots, and Applied Design (Fall 2011)