Ofer
Ofer Tchernichovski, Professor
Email: otcherni@hunter.cuny.edu
Education:
- PhD, Dept. of Zoology, Tel Aviv University
- DVM, Koret Veterinary school, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
- BSc, Biology, Tel Aviv University
Biography:
Ofer Tchernichovski studies cultural evolution and collective behavior in songbirds and humans. In humans, our lab studies online rating systems and governance. We also study songbirds to examine how vocal learning adds up to a culture. Like early speech development in the human infant, the songbird learns to imitate complex sounds during a critical period of development. The adult bird cannot imitate any more - we do not know why. Our lab studies the animal behavior and dynamics of vocal learning and the accumulation of learning biases into cultural phenomena.