Read about a mischievous raccoon, a shape-shifting octopus, and elephants who engage in deceptive behavior.

Lambert argues the need for advancing mental health through more ecologically informed strategies.

She stresses neuroplasticity and is interested in how environments and experiences shape brains.

As someone who has done extensive work on captive and wild animals, I've always been concerned about how data collected in different research environments—different captivity conditions, different field sites, and active versus fieldwork on members of the same species—compare with one another. Recently, I am especially interested in how well research on captive, controlled dogs translates to free-ranging and feral dogs.

However, this doesn't mean any particular research project lacks rigor; instead, it's how robust and generalizable the data are. We can be careful when making sweeping generalizations using data collected in different places. These are among the many reasons I was keenly interested in neuroscientist Dr. Kelly Lambert's wide-ranging new book Wild Brains: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Well, in which she "invites readers on a captivating journey to rethink traditional animal research models, venturing beyond the confines of the laboratory to explore the extraordinary promise of studying animal brains in the wild."

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Wild Brains?

Kelly Lambert: I was trained as a laboratory-focused neuroscientist, and I still value the discoveries that laboratory neuroscience has produced. But as a behavioral neuroscientist, I’ve always been fascinated by the complexity of animals’ lives and the different ways species have evolved to thrive in their habitats.

The final nudge came when a wild rat broke into my histology lab. It knocked over sugar used in one of our protocols and built a nest from a shredded neuroscience journal and pieces of sheep brain left from a student lab practical. We’ve heard of city rats and country rats; I had encountered an academic rat!

The wild rat’s resourcefulness........

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