Ludwig Huber (Juli 25, 1964 in

Neunkirchen, Austria Neunkirchen () is the capital of the district of Neunkirchen in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. As of 2020 it has a population of 12,721. History Neunkirchen is one of the oldest settlements in the Vienna Basin. It has been permanently se ...

) is an Austrian zoologist and a comparative cognitive biologist cognitive biologist at th
Messerli Research Institute
at the

University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna The University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (German: ''Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien'' - in short: VUW) was founded in 1767 as the world's third school for veterinary medicine (after Lyon and Alfort) by Milan's Ludovico Scotti, origina ...

, where he is co-founder head of the Unit o
Comparative Cognition
His research is focused on the experimental and comparative study of

animal cognition Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influen ...

, and he has worked with a wide variety of species, including

pigeons Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

, dogs,

kea The kea (; ; ''Nestor notabilis'') is a species of large parrot in the family Nestoridae found in the forested and alpine regions of the South Island of New Zealand. About long, it is mostly olive-green with a brilliant orange under its wing ...

, and

marmoset The marmosets (), also known as zaris or sagoin, are 22 New World monkey species of the genera '' Callithrix'', '' Cebuella'', '' Callibella'', and ''Mico''. All four genera are part of the biological family Callitrichidae. The term "marmoset" ...

Education and Career

He was born in

, and received a MSc (1988) and a PhD (1991) from the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...

(

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

), under the supervision of

Rupert Riedl Rupert Riedl (22 February 1925 – 18 September 2005) was an Austrian zoologist. Biography Riedl was a scientist with broad interests, whose influence in epistemology grounded in evolutionary theory was notable, although less in English-speakin ...

. From 1991 to 2000 he was an assistant professor at the Institute of Zoology, then associate professor, and in 2010 he was co-founder and head of th
Department of Cognitive Biology
at the University of Vienna. In addition Huber was a lecturer at the Charles University in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

and the

Universidade Salvador Universidade Salvador (UNIFACS) is a university in the city of Salvador, state of Bahia in the northeast of Brazil. It was founded on 1972 as "Escola de Administração de Empresas da Bahia" (Business school of Bahia), later changed to FACS (Facul ...

(

Bahia Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro) and the 5th-largest b ...

Brasil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area an ...

). In 2011 he moved to the ne
Messerli Research Institute
at the

, where he holds the chair of the Natural Science Foundations of

Animal Ethics Animal ethics is a branch of ethics which examines human-animal relationships, the moral consideration of animals and how nonhuman animals ought to be treated. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal law, speciesism, an ...

and Human-Animal Interactions. As double-appointment professor he is linked to the Medical University of Vienna.

Research

His research has focused on the experimental and comparative study of

, studying a wide variety of species, including

archerfish The archerfish (spinner fish or archer fish) form a monotypic family, Toxotidae, of fish known for their habit of preying on land-based insects and other small animals by shooting them down with water droplets from their specialized mouths. ...

, poison frogs,

tortoise Tortoises () are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin: ''tortoise''). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like oth ...

pigeon Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...

dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...

s and

s. He has published more than hundred research articles and book chapters on the cognition and behavior of

non-human animal Personhood or personality is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a leg ...

Honours

In 2011 Huber received the

Ig Nobel Prize The Ig Nobel Prize ( ) is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name o ...

Physiology Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...

together with Anna Wilkinson and Natalie Sebanz for their study "No evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise Geochelone carbonaria". In 2013 he was elected an honorary ambassador of the

Jane Goodall Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Seen as the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best kn ...

Institute Austria, and in 2015 he was elected a member of the scientific advisory board of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.

Selected works

*Huber, L. (2000). Psychophylogenesis: innovations and limitations in the evolution of cognition. In C. Heyes & L. Huber (Eds.), The evolution of cognition (pp. 23–41). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. *Voelkel, B., and Huber, L. (2000). "True imitation in marmosets," Anim. Behav. 60, 195–202. *Huber, L. (2001). "Visual categorization in pigeons," in Avian Visual Cognition, edited by R. Cook (Comparative Cognition Press, Medford, MA). *Huber, L., and Gajdon, G. K. (2006). "Technical intelligence in animals: the kea model," Anim. Cog 9, 295–305. *Huber, L., & Aust, U. (2006). A modified feature theory as an account of pigeon visual categorization. In E. A. Wasserman & T. R. Zentall (Eds.), Comparative cognition: Experimental explorations of animal intelligence (pp. 325–342). New York: Oxford University Press. *Huber, L. (2009). Degrees of rationality in human and non-human animals. In S. Watanabe, A. P. Blaisdell, L. Huber, & A. Young (Eds.), Rational Animals, Irrational Humans (pp. 3–21). Tokyo: Keio University Press. *Huber, L., Range, F., Voelkl, B., Szucsich, A., Viranyi, Z., & Miklosi, A. (2009). The evolution of imitation: what do the capacities of nonhuman animals tell us about the mechanisms of imitation? The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, 2299–2309. *Huber, L. (2010). Categories and Concepts: Language-Related Competences in Non-Linguistic Species. In M. Breed, D. & J. Moore (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior (pp. 261–266). Oxford: Academic Press. *Huber, L., & Wilkinson, A. (2012). Cognitive Evolution: A Comparative Approach. In F. G. Barth, P. Giampieri-Deutsch, & H.-D. Klein (Eds.), Sensory Perception: Mind and Matter (pp. 137–154). Wien, New York: Springer. *Huber, L. (2016). How dogs perceive and understand us. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(5), 339–344. doi:10.1177/0963721416656329

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huber, Ludwig Austrian biologists Academic staff of the University of Vienna Living people Year of birth missing (living people)