【Mumbling Story Lecture Series】Can human beings really become good friends with other animals?

Introduction

We often say "an animal is the best friend of our human beings", and we often see in various discourses that "the intimate relationship between humans and a certain animal has been maintained for thousands or thousands of years". In many literary and film and television works , We often see a beautiful picture, that is, "people live in harmony and happiness with various small animals", just like Snow White sings to a large group of small animals.

But in the real world, is it possible that human relationships with other animals are based on "selfless giving" or "reciprocity"? Is it really possible for us to live with one, two, or more animals, and love each other, without predation, without sacrifice, but with endless joy? In science, are there any methods and tools to measure the relationship between humans and animals?

In this talk, I will select a few studies that use the tools of behavioral ecology, colony ecology, and evolutionary ecology to examine whether our relationships with certain animals are as friendly and beautiful as we think they are. If not, what then?

Speaker introduction

Yan Shenghong

Ph.D., Department of Biological Sciences, Imperial College, University of London, UK, and currently Associate Professor of Department of Biological Sciences, National Sun Yat-Sen University. The main experience is the vice president of the American Lepidoptera Society, the member of the Linnean Society of London, the supervisor of the Taiwan Entomological Society, the columnist of Naruto Hall, PanSci and the Foresight Chinese Elite Forum. He was a pre-doctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (2002) and a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Entomology at the Natural History Museum in London (2003-2004). Areas of expertise include entomology, evolutionary ecology, mimic biology, biodiversity databases, and more. Research directions and interests also include taxonomy of insects, phylogeny and evolutionary ecology, natural history of Taiwan and East Asia, monitoring and management of wildlife trade, etc.