As someone who has done extensive work on captive and wild animals, I’ve always been concerned about how data collected in different research environments—different captivity conditions, different field sites, and active versus fieldwork on members of the same species—compare with one another. Recently, I am especially interested in how well research on captive, controlled dogs translates to free-ranging and feral dogs.
However, this doesn’t mean any particular research project lacks rigor; instead, it’s how robust and generalizable the data are. We can be careful when making sweeping generalizations using data collected in different places. These are among the many reasons I was keenly interested in neuroscientist Dr. Kelly Lambert’s wide-ranging new book Wild Brains: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Well, in which she “invites readers on a captivating journey to rethink traditional animal research models, venturing beyond the confines of the laboratory to explore the extraordinary promise of studying animal brains in the wild.”
Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Wild Brains?
Kelly Lambert: I was trained as a laboratory-focused neuroscientist, and I still value the discoveries that laboratory neuroscience has produced. But as a behavioral neuroscientist, I’ve always been fascinated by the complexity of animals’ lives and the different ways species have evolved to thrive in their habitats.
The final nudge came when a wild rat broke into my histology lab. It knocked over sugar used in one of our protocols and built a nest from a shredded neuroscience journal and pieces of sheep brain left from a student lab practical. We’ve heard of city rats and country rats; I had encountered an academic rat!
The wild rat’s resourcefulness stood in striking contrast to the docile, selectively bred laboratory rats just down the hall. That encounter helped propel my research toward wild rats and other species. I wrote Wild Brains to explore animals in the context of their actual lives, in habitats they evolved to live in. I also hope the book encourages young neuroscientists to broaden the species and environments they study. Nontraditional approaches and models may provide fresh ways to investigate enduring questions about human brain health.
MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?
KL: My graduate training was behavioral neuroscience, with an emphasis on comparative animal behavior. Over nearly four decades of studying brains and behavior, the comparative side of that training took the back seat. Meanwhile, I focused on laboratory rats. I even wrote a book about what they taught me, The Lab Rat Chronicles.
My curiosity about other species, however, never went away. Since early in my career, I’ve conducted observational research with macaques at Monkey Jungle and the DuMond Conservancy near Miami. I’ve also been fascinated by raccoons since childhood, which eventually led me to study their behavior and brains.
The theme that connects Wild Brains with my past lab research is experience-based neuroplasticity, the theme of my laboratory research. Essentially, we’re interested in how environments and experiences shape brains. Wild Brains allowed me to explore that question across a much wider range of animals.
MB: Who do you hope to reach?
KL: Can I say anyone with a brain? Seriously, brains don’t come with operating manuals. I hope the book reaches readers who are curious about animals, their own mental well-being, or how brains work. Because brains change throughout life—“from the womb to the tomb,” as I often say—these questions concern all of us.
Animal Behavior Essential Reads
MB: What are some of the topics you consider, and what are your major messages?
KL: I begin by asking how rats, and later mice, came to dominate so much biomedical research. It’s a fascinating history involving rat-baiting competitions, a royal rat catcher in nineteenth-century London, raccoons that escaped early research settings, and the practical difficulty of capturing and maintaining wild animals.
From there, I explore intelligence, parenting, stress and coping, aging, and some wonderfully unexpected animal behavior. The book draws on my research and work by many other scientists. Prairie voles have helped us investigate social bonds; naked mole-rats raise intriguing questions about aging and disease; and research on animal hormones, including work with Gila monsters and their appetite-suppressing peptide, contributed to the development of GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs. These examples show the benefits of paying attention to the distinctive biology and lives of other species.
One central message in Wild Brains is that context matters. Laboratory studies have taught us a great deal, but an animal’s housing, opportunities, and daily experiences influence the brain and behavior we observe. I propose more “living laboratories” that bring elements of natural habitats into research settings, alongside carefully designed ways to study animals in the wild. I also imagine more ambitious semi-natural settings—what I call biodomes—that reflect aspects of a species’ terrain, climate, and social world.
Scientists make influential decisions about the worlds our research animals inhabit. We can acknowledge that those decisions influence our research, and carefully consider habitats that support optimal behavioral responses in research models.
MB: How does your work differ from that of others concerned with similar topics?
KL: I have a foot in both the laboratory and the field, and I appreciate what each can reveal. Controlled experiments let us investigate mechanisms that would be difficult to isolate in nature. Field research lets scientists investigate behavioral scenarios we might never think to recreate in a lab.
New tools for tracking and observing animals make it increasingly possible to ask meaningful questions about free-ranging animals while minimizing disturbance. In the lab, I’d like us to become more comfortable with complexity, including richer environments, more opportunities for animals to make choices, and greater attention to their natural behavior. Comparative neuroendocrinologist Frank Beach urged researchers decades ago to study a broader range of animals and behaviors, all while embracing the messiness of “real life” in the laboratory. His challenge still feels timely.
MB: Are you hopeful that learning more about animal brains in the wild will also help us understand ourselves?
KL: Very much so. Comparing wild rats with laboratory rats has already revealed striking differences in their brains and physiology, including brain size, aspects of neural and vascular structure, and stress hormone levels. Those findings raise questions we could not ask if we assumed the laboratory rat represented the full range of rat responses.
I’m cautious about translating any finding directly from a rat—or any other animal—to a human. But a wider view of animal lives can help us ask better questions about how experience shapes resilience, learning, and mental health. I hope Wild Brains sparks curiosity in readers and makes room for research that takes the complexity of animals’ lives seriously.
