Painting elephants and talking monkeys. Culture and creativity in animals

Can we speak of culture and creativity existing in the animal kingdom? This is a matter of some controversy in the scientific community. Traditionally, culture in its various manifestations has been understood as an exclusively human activity. However, by pushing the boundaries of the definition of this phenomenon, one can find the beginnings of culture and creative behaviour in the animal kingdom. How do animals learn to paint and what does their art look like? Is it fair to compare animal and human art? Let’s find out from Daria Podvigina’s lecture. 

Lecturer 

Daria Podvigina graduated from the Faculty of Psychology at St Petersburg University in 2002 and started working at Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the same year. Since 2015, she has been Senior Research Associate at the Laboratory for Cognitive Studies at St Petersburg University (since 2020 — the Institute for Cognitive Studies at the University). Her main research interests are neurophysiological and psychophysiological mechanisms of visual perception and recognition of complex images. She is the author of more than 40 scholarly papers. In addition to her research activities, she teaches a number of courses at the Institute for Cognitive Studies and at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St Petersburg University (lecture courses "Introduction to Life Sciences", "Human: Evolution, Culture, Behaviour", and others). 

The lecture will be held as part of the events to mark the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University, the oldest university in Russia. The meeting will be held online in Russian with simultaneous interpreting into Spanish.

Registration