Dr Lisa Yon is an expert in captive animal welfare and works to improve the lives of and our understanding of wildlife living in captive & semi-captive homes around the world. She specialises in elephant intelligence & behaviour, and clearly loves them dearly. She serves on the board of many incredible organisations in the conservation world, including Frozen Ark - a global mission to cryogenically preserve endangered and ecosystem-critical species.   

We talked about how elephants navigate and interpret their worlds, and their sophisticated social needs. We talked about what different players in conservation are doing to improve both their lives in captivity and in the wild. And we also talked about Lisa's work with biobanking (cryogenically freezing species for future regeneration projects) and the cooperation across the conservation industry to bring all these hopes to reality.   

0:00 Lisa's career path 

07:16 Wild Bull (male) elephants 

13:16 Social teaching & learning 

15:18 Communicating & infrasound 

22:05 Research in their perception of their world 

25:05 Cohabitation & herds 

27:53 Navigating anthropological change 

31:34 Improving captive wellbeing  

35:30 Lisa's methods for assessing welfare 

43:38 Are elephants getting 'tamer'?  

49:07 Incentivising zoos re: welfare 

54:12 Changing laws on captive welfare 

56:14 Biobanking: Frozen Ark 

01:03:15 Global network of biobanks 

01:08:06 Cooperation in conservation 

01:14:20 Conservation & zoonotic diseases 

01:21:53 Elephants' strong social bonds 

01:27:52 Will megafauna go extinct in the wild? 

01:32:33 Lisa's next research project

This is a series of in-depth conversations with fascinating people, with loads to say about the current state of the world, everything that came before us, and everything that could be still to come.   

You can also WATCH this episode on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/axBNUeUWnO4

We hope you enjoy.  

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Lisa's Work: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vet/people/lisa.yon  

Frozen Ark:  https://www.frozenark.org  

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