My Octopus Teacher
NOON HOUR ZOOM MEETING
Jennifer Mather, Faculty University of Lethbridge, Psychology Department
A documentary film 10 years in the making, My Octopus Teacher won an Oscar for best documentary feature at April 27th, 2021 Academy Awards ceremony and those cheering included Dr. Jennifer Mather, a University of Lethbridge psychology professor and octopus expert.
Dr. Jennifer is Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge. She has published many articles on cephalopod behavior and intelligence and is regarded as an authority on ethics with regard to cephalopods. She has been studying octopuses for more than 40 years and found her love of sea life while growing up in Victoria, B.C.
"I was fascinated with sea animals when I was a child and I decided I was going to study sea animals when I grew up," she said. "Anybody who thinks what they want to be when they're 10 is what you turn out to be when you're 70 is very unusual."
Since then, she has spent years travelling the globe and researching sea creatures, particularly octopuses.
It was because of this that Mather was asked by South African filmmaker Craig Foster to work on the Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher as a scientific consultant.