Océane Liehrmann

       I am a French freshly graduated PhD affiliated with the Department of Biology at the University of Turku in Finland (January 2020 to December 2023). I am a member of Prof. Virpi Lummaa's group and I was also co-supervised by Dr. Léa Lansade from the Physiology of Reproduction and Behaviour Unit of the INRAE in France.

My research focuses on investigating the human-animal relationship, specifically in working animals. During the first two years of my PhD, I examined how familiarity and the duration of the handler-animal relationship can influence animal behaviour in novel situations, as well as the quality of communication within the dyad during cognitive tasks. To gather data for this research, I worked with working Asian elephants used for timber work in Myanmar, as well as conducted experiments with leisure horses in Southwest Finland.

Since 2021, I have started a new project that centers around the human-reindeer relationship and reindeer behaviour and cognition, specifically studying sledding reindeer used in the tourist industry.

On the side, I am also working on a contactless and non-invasive method to assess stress levels and emotional state in animals using infrared measurement of eye temperature. This method has been successfully tested on reindeer, and I am now applying it to horses through my collaboration with the INRAE.