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In this week’s Science Café Adam Walton poses some unusual questions: how do you make a dog jealous?; how do hermit crabs respond to noise pollution?; how do you stop bats being killed by wind turbines?; and what’s the best way to keep seagulls off your fish and chips?

What connects these apparently random questions is that the answers can all be found at Aberystwyth University as it hosts the annual get-together of UK and international animal behaviour scientists. The Easter Conference of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour is a chance for graduate and undergraduate researchers to showcase their work and compare notes.

The theme which links several of the research projects is sound. Dr. Colin Hendrie from Leeds University is investigating the effect on herring gulls of playing different sounds, from their own alarm calls to a woodland dawn chorus. Erin Walsh from Queen’s University Belfast and Svenja Tidau from Plymouth University are both looking at the effect of man-made noise – from ships for example -  on hermit crabs.  And Lia Gilmour from Bristol University is researching a way of using sound to keep bats away from wind turbines. 

Adam also meets Megan Orr and Lauren Branfield, two undergraduate researchers who are exploring dog behaviour. Lauren is looking into the link between canine personality and learning ability while Megan is investigating jealousy in dogs.

We hear from Dr. Rupert Marshall, lecturer in Animal Behaviour at Aberystwyth University and one of the organisers of the ASAB Conference. He explains what animal behaviour can teach us about human behaviour. And Colin Hendrie gives an intriguing example of that: his research into human sexual attractiveness which used a nightclub as a laboratory!