I am an associate professor in Cognitive Zoology. My main research concerns the evolution of cognition, and in particular independently evolved similar cognition which leads to an understanding of cognitive principles. I compare great apes and corvids which are similar in their complex cognition despite sharing a last common ancestor about 320 million years ago. I also study cognition in the deep evolutionary history of the bird lineage, including the extinct dinosaurs, by comparing crocodilians with the least derived birds, the palaeognaths. I similarly study the evolution of the mammals by comparing monotremes, marsupials and placentals. The two lineages are compared in order to get a better picture of the natural history of cognition that lead to the high levels we see today in some species of both lineages.