In Memorium:
Roger Payne, 1935-2023
Written by Sue Margulis, Historian
On June 10, 2023, Roger Payne passed away at the age of 88. This is a huge loss not only to the animal behavior research community, but to the conservation community, and to all who knew Roger Payne. Born in New York City, Roger completed his undergraduate degree in biology at Harvard University in 1956, and went on to complete a PhD at Cornell University in 1961. His early research focused on acoustic communication in owls, bats, and moths. Much of his early career was spent as a research zoologist at the Institute for Research in Animal Behavior (IRAB). This was a joint position run by Rockefeller University and the New York Zoological Society.
Roger was a highly accomplished amateur cellist, and his interest in and proficiency at music would profoundly shape his future. Roger’s most significant contribution is undoubtedly his work on whale song. In the mid-1960’s, inspired by recordings of whale sounds made by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute researcher Dr. William Scheville, he and his first wife Dr. Katharine (Boynton) Payne travelled to Bermuda to listen to and record whale sounds for themselves. During this trip, they met an engineer who had come across whale sounds (“songs”) and recorded many during his Navy-related work. The engineer, Dr. Frank Wadlington, gave Roger a massive compendium of recordings. Roger then collaborated with Dr. Scott McVay to formally describe these sounds, referring to them as song, and published this work in Science in 1971.
His experience hearing the captivating songs of whales re-shaped Roger’s career. While he maintained a productive academic career, his focus shifted to the conservation of the great whales and their environment. He released several recordings which gained a significant following, the first being Songs of the Humpback Whale (released in 1970). In 1971, He established The Ocean Alliance, whose mission was to protect whales and their environment, and to support research, education, and the arts. Roger’s extensive scientific background, combined with his public outreach through The Ocean Alliance and his books and articles for the general public, have been cited as a driving force in the establishment of the environmental movement in the 1970’s. His work helped to motivate the establishment of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and to bring an end to commercial whaling.
The Ocean Alliance website shares the following about Roger’s passing: “Over the course of more than six decades, Roger inspired students, scientists and citizens around the world with his work on the vocalizations of whales, showing us the depth and sophistication of their emotional lives. In doing so, Roger helped jump-start the modern environmental movement. By making people care about whales, he made them care about the planet.1"
His most recent effort, begun in 2020, was Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), funded by a TED Audacious Grant. The aim of this project is to use machine learning to “translate” the songs of sperm whales. This effort, which comprises a team of nearly 50 scientists and engineers, continues despite the loss of Roger Payne. His numerous awards include a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984. He is regarded as one of the pre-eminent whale scientists.
Payne published over 150 scientific and popular articles, and continued to be a productive scientist and conservation advocate until his death. Just a few days before his death, he published an essay in Time magazine in which he called for a new conservation movement, and a shift in priorities. In this essay, Roger stated: “every species, including humans, depends on a suite of other species to keep the world habitable for it, and each of those species depends in turn on an overlapping but somewhat different suite of species to keep their niche livable for them… The challenge now is figuring out how to motivate ourselves and our fellow humans to make species preservation our highest calling—something we will never cut corners on, delay, postpone, diminish, or defund.2”
Roger retired from the Ocean Alliance in 2021, though remained an active advocate and researcher. He lived in South Woodstock Vermont with his second wife, Lisa Harrow. He died at home, and is survived by four children.
One can find many examples of humpback whale song on line; listen to one of these songs in honor of Dr. Roger Payne.
Examples of whale song:
https://paulwinter.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-the-humpback-whale
Macauley Library: https://search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog?taxonCode=t-11028617
1. Ocean Alliance website, www.whale.org
2. Payne, R. June 5, 2023. I spent my life saving the whales. Now they might save us. Time Magazine.
In Memorium:
Douglas Candland, July 9, 1934 – April 16, 2023
Written by Sue Margulis, Michael Pereira, and Alex Piel. Excerpts from The Daily Item Obituary, with permission
Douglas Candland, founder of the first undergraduate major in animal behavior, passed away on April 16, 2023. Doug’s influence on the field of animal behavior is enormous – as so many of us trace our academic origins to his mentorship.
Doug grew up in southern California, and completed his undergraduate degree at Pomona College, with majors in some combination of psychology, philosophy, and history. He then traveled across the country to Princeton University where he completed his PhD in psychology in 1959 and, after a year’s post-doc at the University of Virginia, he began a faculty position in psychology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. It was here that Doug spent his entire academic career, retiring in 2003. In 1968, Doug established the animal behavior major at Bucknell. For many years, this was “the school” for undergraduates aiming for a career in animal behavior. Doug established a resident colony of several non-human primate species on campus that further supported the program. It was indeed an invaluable opportunity for both undergraduates and students in the master’s program to study the behavior of diverse primate species, at times including hamadryas baboons, gelada baboons, Japanese snow monkeys, ring-tailed lemurs, squirrel monkeys, and later lion-tailed macaques and capuchins. Alumni of the Program have gone into careers in veterinary medicine, wildlife cinematography, conservation policy, biomedicine, and academia, to name only a few.
In 2018, Bucknell hosted a 50-year celebration of the Animal Behavior Program, which honored Doug, his legacy, and the diaspora of students that it inspired.
Doug was a gifted teacher, and was recognized by both the Animal Behavior Society and the American Psychological Foundation for his outstanding mentorship and creativity in the classroom. It was not at all unusual for students to gather at his home for a pot-luck and conversation.
Doug was an active scholar, publishing over 100 papers – often with student coauthors – during his career. Notably, he published several books that gained prominence both within and outside of the academic community. Feral Children and Clever Animals (1993) gained particular notoriety, and led to numerous appearances on television and commentary on wide-ranging topics beyond feral children, including animal rights and primate behavior. Doug considered his monograph on the history of studies of emotion, published in the book Emotion (Wadsworth 1977, 2003) to be his finest scholarship. His final book, An Archeopsychology of the Modern Mind, was published in 2012. He served as the editor of the Review of General Psychology from his retirement in 2002 until 2014.
In sport and hobby, Doug was regarded as a B squash player and an online grandmaster at Cribbage. He played the piano, adored classical music, and found a clever way to connect almost any topic back to Aristotle, Plato, or Kant, to name a few of his inspirations.
In April 2021, Glen Tullman, Bucknell '81, made a significant gift to the university's endowment naming three purposes: To establish and endow a chair, named for Doug, to the holder of the office of Dean of Arts and Sciences; to endow civic engagement between students, faculty, and the community; and to endow operating costs for the Program in Animal Behavior. There is also a summer fellowship named after Doug, which supports undergraduate students to undertake research either in the field or lab.
Doug and his wife Mary Elizabeth Homrighausen Candland were married for over 50 years, and were the parents of three sons. Doug was a devoted husband, father, and grandfather, and was surrounded by his two surviving sons when he passed.
Several of his former students share their thoughts:
When I was searching for colleges as a high school junior, years before the internet, my brother was looking through a catalog and said: “hey, here’s a school where you can major in animal behavior.” That’s all I needed to hear. I knew nothing about the school, I just knew that was where I would go. It was the only university to which I applied. Doug was exceptional at seeing the potential in students and nurturing that potential. I got involved in research during the summer after my freshman year, and lived in the cross-generational house the Doug helped students establish. I studied mother-infant behavior in the snow monkey colony that Doug had established at Bucknell (Doug’s rationale was that aging begins at birth, thus the research fit in well with the theme of the cross-generational project). I had an office in the animal behavior lab that I called my own, I participated in graduate student lab meetings, and learned what research was all about. By the time I graduated, I had a publication, I had been to my first Animal Behavior Society Conference, and my future was laid out before me, shaped by Doug. He remained a dear friend for over 40 years.
Sue (Weinberg) Margulis, Bucknell ‘82
Doug was my undergraduate advisor, and close friend for over two decades. He guided my intellectual growth and nurtured my emotional development as an over-confident Bucknell undergraduate and facilitated my first field experience in Madagascar. My time in Madagascar provided personal and professional experiences that formed the foundation of who I am today. I can still chuckle at his sly humor, be challenged by his sharp mind, and comforted by his compassionate words. I cherished my time as his student, his colleague, and his friend. His influence has transcended my own family’s generational boundaries; my children adored the secret hideouts of his home, and my oldest son plays the piano because of Doug’s encouragement. His influence is ubiquitous in my life.
I can best summarize Doug with an anecdote. As a freshman Animal Behavior major, and having struggled through Chemistry and Psychology intro courses (I failed my first Biology course, too!), I was floundering in the Spring of my first year. Where my parents and professors saw an inability to cope with Bucknell’s demands, Doug saw a system that didn’t allow the flexibility for me to demonstrate my abilities. He encouraged me to write on science for The Bucknellian, read Plato in Ancient Greek Philosophy courses, and develop a research career. He fostered the latter by inviting me to New York City (having graduated high school in California, I had never been) to a seminar at Columbia University. The talk was by a friend and colleague of Doug’s – Prof. Herb Terrace, of the famous ‘Nim Chimpsky’ work. Herb was presenting on monkey numerical abilities. Halfway through, Doug scribbled on a napkin, “I wonder what Doug would think.” Of course, he was referring to Doug the hamadryas baboon, housed at Bucknell in the Primate lab. We returned and that summer I received a fellowship in Doug’s name to begin a project first teaching the baboons to use a touch screen, then assisting a Masters student to continue the work when I left the following year for Madagascar. These experiences taught me about experimental design and scientific inquiry, but more importantly they catalyzed an intellectual promiscuity, founded on the belief that my first-year grades were not the reflection of my potential they are so often misconstrued to be for students and parents alike. Instead, Doug had created outlets for me to mature and grow, to replace cockiness with confidence, and immerse myself in my academic pursuits.
Like others who knew Doug, my history with him is filled with these types of stories. They share a common thread – Doug’s selflessness, generosity, kindheartedness, and love....for his work, his friends, and his students. We are all unique, but people like Doug Candland are a rare kind. They come around once in a lifetime if we’re lucky. We are all better, and richer people for having shared our worlds with him, his with us.
Alex Piel, Bucknell ‘01
Lucky for me were my parents’ concept of college – vocational training – and insistence across a childhood of quarterly reports of school grades, that, barring gainful employment upon graduating high school, I’d proceed directly to college, helping them to pay for whatever training I’d chosen to pursue for myself. Fascinated by animals from my earliest years, I told everyone that I’d target a career in research on free-living animals. In eighth grade, I wrote a researcher of wolves who had narrated the new documentary on wolf research televised that year (1969), to ask where I might best attend college to become an ethologist. He wrote back that the only undergraduate program in animal behavior of which he knew had just begun the prior year at Bucknell University, under Dr. Douglas Candland in Psychology. I was ecstatic to learn this, and my father drove me from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania to meet Dr. Candland a couple of years later, midway through my high schooling. I applied only to Bucknell, got admitted, and its Program in Animal Behavior was everything for which I’d hoped and more. Doug attended purposefully to the specific interests of his students, and routinely made invaluable experiences possible for those with whom he interacted regularly. Knowing that my strongest interest lay with observations of free-living animals, Doug invited me to join a small group spending the inter-semester period my freshman year studying the vervet monkeys of St. Kitts in the Caribbean. In sophomore year, Doug encouraged my contacting Glen Woolfenden, to arrange to visit his long-term study of scrub jays, and their non-reproductive “helping at the nest,” at Florida’s Archbold Biological Station the following year. My senior thesis documented mothers’ abilities to distinguish their offspring among weanling age peers via voices alone in the unique outdoor group of Japanese monkeys that Doug had earlier established at Bucknell. Along the way, Doug might also address specific shortcomings he felt important to bring to a student’s attention, as when he invited me to a semester-long one-on-one tutorial regarding works by great learning theorists of the early twentieth century, turning me into someone who’ll happily take to his grave the names Edward Tolman, Clark Hull, Edwin Guthrie, and John Watson. Doug Candland’s one-of-a-kind program and caring, individualized approach provided me and hundreds of others pivotal experiences during turning-point years of our young lives. By engaging us with insight and youthfulness each step of the way, Doug became something like a favorite uncle – the edgy one – eyes a-twinkle telling of a lifetime broad in experience spent seeking to understand behavior. Always prodding, encouraging, and collaborating, Doug seemed invariably to see possibilities where most others saw nothing at all. And after fledging, we reciprocally delighted in every successive update on our further goings on. Doug served many of us well for many years, each in our own ways, teaching us, ultimately, one way and another, about just that – working hard having fun being a good human. I miss him already, I’m happy to say. RIP, dear Doug.
Michael E. Pereira, Bucknell ‘78
Photo credit: Kevin Candland, 2021, published in the Daily Item, 2023 |
Sue Margulis and Doug Candland at the 50th anniversary celebration of Bucknell’s Animal Behavior program. Photo credit: Peter Margulis |
In remembrance of:
Charles T. Snowdon, 1941–2023
by Toni E. Ziegler, Karen B. Strier, Anne Savage, and Matthew W. Campbell
Charles T. Snowdon (Chuck), a world renowned primatologist, died of complications due to COVID on January 8, 2023. He retired in 2012 as a Hilldale Professor of Psychology Emeritus after 44 years at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Chuck was a dedicated scientist and teacher, publishing many articles and advising over 35 students as undergraduates and in graduate studies. Of specific relevance to the society, Chuck was the North American editor-in-chief of Animal Behaviour from 1985-1988 and President of ABS from 1990-1991.
During his career he served as chair of the Psychology department, director of the Honors Program, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Comparative Psychology (1995-2000), served on the Advisory Board of Primates, and was a Founding Member of the International Primatological Society’s Heritage Trust Fund in 2021. The American Society of Primatologists recognized Chuck with its Outstanding Mentor award in 2007 and its Distinguished Primatologist Award, ASP's highest honor, in 2014. The word “retirement” didn't apply to Chuck. He continued to contribute to the University of Wisconsin and chaired the faculty advisory committee to the Study Abroad program, served as a University Ombuds, and was a member of the Psychology Department Board of Visitors. He continued to write and edit journal articles, mentor students, and collaborate with colleagues in writing new scientific papers. Chuck had a visit to the field planned to see cotton-top tamarins in Colombia, but he died 10 days before the trip.
Chuck's primary avenue of research involved marmosets and tamarins who display cooperative infant care both in captivity and in the wild. He and his students studied vocal and chemical communication, social cognition, social development, behavioral endocrinology, and paternal behavior in Callitrichid monkeys in captivity and in the wild. Chuck felt a profound ethical responsibility toward conducting research on captive animals, particularly the critically endangered cotton-top tamarin. His decision to house the tamarins with natural substrates was initially met with resistance by inspectors, but has since become the recommendation. He and his long-time collaborator, Toni Ziegler, pioneered methods for collecting and assaying hormones noninvasively. These measures began as a commitment to noninvasive research on a critically endangered species, but they have since been applied to monitoring stress and reproductive endocrinology of wild primates in South America and Africa.
As a scientist, Chuck felt that research in the lab needed to be complemented by research in the field, that studying diverse species through the comparative method was essential to animal behavior, and that with research came a responsibility for conservation. To these ends, Chuck’s graduate students pursued field studies on cotton-top tamarins (Colombia), pygmy marmosets (Ecuador), common marmosets (Brazil), southern right whales (Argentina), mountain gorillas (Rwanda), chimpanzees (Tanzania), patas monkeys (Kenya), and chacma baboons (Botswana). Some of the research and conservation projects begun by these students continue today.
His significant legacy and impact lives on through his many students. Chuck invested heavily in each of his students, helping them to develop both professionally and personally. As a mentor, he challenged his students to think creatively and was dedicated to ensuring they were well-trained, ethical scientists and communicators. It is because of his dedication to his students and collaborators that they continue to make significant contributions to the study of animal behavior and biodiversity conservation.
One such initiative, Proyecto Tití, began in 1985 with Chuck’s then graduate student, Dr. Anne Savage. Proyecto Tití works to study and conserve the cotton-top tamarin, educate local people about the tamarins and conservation, and to support the sustainable development of neighboring communities. By partnering with local people, Proyecto Tití works to secure a better future for both people and tamarins. After Chuck’s death, his former students, lab members, and collaborators established the Dr. Charles Snowdon Forest Legacy Campaign in his honor. Los Tities de San Juan is a protected reserve adjacent to the Santuario de Fauna y Flora Los Colorado, a protected national park in Colombia for cotton-top tamarins. Proyecto Tití is working to double the size of Los Tities de San Juan so that these two forest reserves will be the largest tract of secure forests for cotton-top tamarins in Colombia. Not only will cotton-top tamarins benefit by the increased habitat, but local communities will benefit as degraded land is purchased and trees are planted, and more people are employed to help manage and restore the forests of Los Tities de San Juan Forest Reserve. For those who are so moved, donations to the Dr. Charles Snowdon Forest Legacy Campaign can be made at https://proyectotiti.networkforgood.com/projects/193362-dr-charles-snowdon-forest-legacy-campaign.
Caption: Dr. Anne Savage (left, Executive Director of Proyecto Tití) and Dr. Toni Ziegler (right, Distinguished Scientist Emeritus of the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center) in Colombia in Spring, 2023. Applied nucleation is a common practice in forest restoration in which young saplings are planted around a large tree to increase the probability of future seed dispersal as they mature. The large tree is the nucleus honoring Chuck, and the young sapling trees planted nearby on top of some of Chuck’s ashes represent the many students he has mentored throughout his career.
Chuck’s lab members fondly remember cooking parties at his home with his partner, Ann Lindsey. Not content to only share good food, Chuck had his lab join together to learn and make new recipes. Just as cotton-top tamarins teach their young about what foods to eat (and avoid), perhaps this was Chuck’s attempt to help his students learn to eat better. Chuck and Ann were passionate Scottish dancers (in full regalia, of course) and enjoyed vacations in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. In the community, Chuck served as president of the board of directors of the Madison Opera, another one of their fond pursuits and causes. We will all remember Chuck for his genuine warmth, sense of humor, thoughtful questions, and willingness to listen.