I was born and grew up in Mexico City and later moved to the UK and studied biology in Oxford. I then moved to Cambridge to do a PhD examining how interactions with adults help meerkat pups learn to forage for themselves. Following my PhD, I took up a Drapers’ Company Research Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, focusing on the spread of information and the establishment of traditions in meerkat groups. This work led me to spend much of my early career wandering about the Kalahari Desert, but in 2010 I began a programme of research closer to home, investigating culture, cognition and collective behaviour in jackdaws.

Other recent lines of research include work on the cognitive foundations of human cumulative culture and collaborative work on culture in great tits and cognition in Australian magpies. I have been based at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall campus since October 2012, where I am now the Professor of Cognitive Evolution.