From Buenos Aires to Oxford
Kacelnik grew up in Buenos Aires and received his biological sciences degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1970. He subsequently studied animal behaviour at Oxford, completing his doctorate under John Krebs in 1979. After work in Groningen and Cambridge, he developed a behavioural ecology research group at Oxford.
References: [2]
Decisions and the value of information
His research examines the information underlying a choice as well as the outcome selected. In his account, curiosity and avoidance of uncertainty are not simple opposites: animals may seek uncertainty when they can subsequently reduce it. Such experiments connect learning with foraging, risk and environmental conditions.
References: [2]
Birds and tool problems
Starlings and New Caledonian crows have been important experimental systems. Studies of tool use and problem solving use manipulable objects and mechanical tasks to investigate how effective actions emerge, rather than treating success alone as a complete description of intelligence.
Behaviour and cognition
Kacelnik has also participated in comparisons between problem solving in birds and robots, connecting behavioural analysis with the design of artificial systems. His broader questions concern how behaviour works, why its mechanisms evolved and what consequences they have in different ecological settings.