Join The Explorers Club on Tuesday, November 18th, for a sneak preview of TEC Fellow Caitlin O’Connell’s new documentary, based on her New York Times Notable book, Wild Rituals.
Behavioral ecologist and world-renowned elephant scientist Caitlin O’Connell has spent more than 30 years studying animals in their natural habitats. In Wild Rituals, she offers a captivating look at their individual and group behavior that teaches how we can become more connected to ourselves, nature, and others.
Through her expeditions across the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the African savanna, she immerses us in the cultures of elephants, apes, zebras, rhinos, lions, whales, and flamingos, along with human traditions across the world. What can we learn from the ritual of a 110-year-old tortoise gifting a Galapagos tomato to his mate? How do wolf packs mourn their dead? With fascinating stories and surprising insights about resilience, collective power, and self-awareness, O’Connell delivers a greater understanding of just how similar we are to these wild creatures and an appreciation of the social behaviors that lead to stronger relationships and communities.
This in-person lecture at the Explorers Club Headquarters will include an audience Q&A. A book signing will follow the Q&A.
RESERVATIONS
This will be an in-person lecture at Explorers Club Headquarters.
In-person tickets are $20 for Members, and $35 for the General Public.
Check-in will begin at 6:00 pm, with a beer and wine reception from 6:00 – 7:00 pm
Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell
Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, Ph.D., Explorer’s Club Fellow and National Geographic Explorer, is a Stanford University behavioral ecologist who has studied elephants in Etosha National Park, Namibia, for over 30 years. Her National Geographic Society-funded project started in 2002, when she began measurements of the elephants’ ability to detect vibrations as signals. The scope of her work expanded to a broad look at how an elephant society is organized in an arid environment. She obtained a B.S. in Biology from Fairfield University, a M.S. in animal communication at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a Ph.D. in ecology at University of California, Davis. Caitlin worked for the Namibian government for three years, helping farmers in rural Zambezi to manage the elephant/human interface in the region, along with studying elephant ecology and behavior and particularly their vocal communication. She was then a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the Center for Conservation Biology, studying ivory trade policy in China, while working on elephant hearing research at Stanford School of Medicine. Most recently, she was an NIH-funded Instructor at Harvard Medical School studying the elephant low-frequency ear and bone conduction hearing as compared to humans. O’Connell-Rodwell and her husband co-founded a nonprofit organization, Utopia Scientific, in 2002, allowing them to work with donor volunteers and Namibian students at her elephant field site in Namibia. She has given two TED talks and many public lectures around the world, as well as publishing eight books, both fiction and nonfiction, about her research, along with numerous scientific and popular articles, including features in Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine and one upcoming in Aeon Magazine. She won the Sibert and Horn Book Honors for her co-authored book, The Elephant Scientist. Her most recent book, Wild Rituals, was a New York Times Notable Book. She has been featured in many documentaries, including a one-hour award-winning Smithsonian documentary on her male elephant studies. Her books have been translated into French, Dutch, Chinese and Korean.
