Gordon M. Burghardt, Ph.D.

Gordon M. Burghardt, Alumni Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Psychology & Neuroscience and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, received his S.B. and Ph.D. in Biopsychology from the University of Chicago and focuses on behavioral development in diverse species, primarily reptiles , but also bears and primates. He has studied sensory perception, predation, antipredator behavior, sociality, genetics, enrichment, cognition, conservation, ethical treatment, mating systems, and animal play. His research has been supported by many research grants and he was a J. S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellow at Rockefeller University. He is a past president of both the Animal Behavior Society and the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology as well as a Fellow of AAAS, ABS, APA, and APS. He has authored or edited 9 books, including coediting The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition and The Health and Welfare of Captive Reptiles ; authored The Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits and coauthored The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles . He is founding and current Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Ethology.