MSc in Animal Behaviour

The scientific study of animal behaviour tells us how animals interact with both the physical and the social worlds that they live within. This MSc provides a rigorous scientific training in the study of animal behaviour.

You will be taught by world-leading researchers, giving you the opportunity to learn about the latest cutting-edge developments in animal behaviour, including behavioural ecology and evolution, optimisation and life history theory, sensory biology, decision-making, neural/physiological mechanisms of behaviour, social biology, and sexual selection. Programme topics include behavioural ecology and evolution, decision-making and behavioural mechanisms, social biology, and sexual selection.

The programme will enhance your skills in both theory and experimentation, as well as helping you to develop transferable skills including statistics, data handling, scientific writing, and research methods. It focuses on critical thought and the scientific method as well as on subject-specific knowledge.

Core Units

In the first half of the programme, you will take two in-depth, subject-specific units, each consisting of examined lectures and practical work and taught by leaders in the field:

• Staying Alive
• Sex and Society

Together with other MSc students in Biological Sciences, you will also learn key transferable skills relevant to your subject by taking a further three units:

• Professional Development for the Life Sciences
• Communicating Science
• Understanding Data: Experimental Design and Statistics for Life Scientists

You will learn through lectures, seminars, workshops, and talks by visiting international researchers. You will also have the opportunity to produce grant applications, peer assessments, presentations, posters, and reviews.

Research project

Working as part of an active research group, students then begin to develop ideas for the independent research project which makes up the second half of the programme.

• Research Project Planning

Background information is collected, clear targets are set and agreed for data collection, trials are carried out, and students discuss and plan experimental design and statistical analysis.

• Research Project Execution

Data are collected, analysed, and presented in the dissertation.