Behavioural Biology For You - With You

In the international press, ELTE is the most famous university in Hungary, clearly because of its research on dogs. It has been a leader in the field of dog behavior for decades, and its staff have won several ERC and Lendület (Momentum) grants. Successful involvement of domestic dog owners in their studies and a strong emphasis on awareness raising are important factors in their achievements. In this spirit, they have produced a film series "Behavioural Biology For You - With You", which presents the methodology of ethology and the Senior Family Dog Project, Alpha Generation Lab, Neuroethology and the Lendület (Momentum) Companion Animal Research Group.

In addition to dogs, viewers can meet other companion animal species and even children in episodes that average 16 minutes in length. In the final episode, the founder of the department, Vilmos Csányi, and his student, the current head of the department, Ádám Miklósi, discuss how the research has evolved.

"I called in four people - including Ádám - and told them to choose: they can leave or they can study dogs with me. They gave me a very sour face but eventually said fine, we will study dogs with me, and they asked me, how? I said, I have no idea. That's how it started. And then we figured it out together," says Vilmos Csányi in the film. A longer version of the interview will be available on the Ethologists video channel in the second week of December.

First episode of the series

Interestingly, the creators of the film series are mostly researchers.

The writers and hosts are Zsófia Bognár PhD student and Rita Lenkei PhD candidate, the editor Zsófia Bognár, the sound engineer Tamás Faragó vocalisation researcher, the lead cinematographer and composer Ádám Leéb, the responsible editor and the cinematographer of several scenes, the interviewer of Csányi-Miklósi report is Enikő Kubinyi Lendület (Momentum) research group leader. The video series was supported by the NRDIH Mecenatúra programme and is available free of charge on the largest video-sharing platform (here) and on the social networking site (here).

In addition to the six-part video series, the researchers have also made scientific presentations available thanks to the support of the Mecenatúra. Researchers from the Department of Ethology at ELTE have been organising a conference for several years to show the owners who have participated in the department's studies the results of their research.

This time, 15 Hungarian and 16 English-language lectures from the IX Dog Ethology Conference,

edited by Andrea Temesi, PhD candidate, have been posted online under the title "Entry with a dog only". In total, 37 videos and nearly 9 hours of programming have been added to the video channels of our Hungarian ethologists.

The project MEC_N 141314 was implemented with the support of the Ministry of Innovation and Technology through the National Research Development and Innovation Fund, funded by the MEC_N_21 programme.