Priv.-Doz. Zsofia Viranyi, PhD
Zsófia Virányi is a Senior Researcher at the Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria. She studied biology, gained her PhD in 2004 on animal behaviour and habilitated in 2021 on animal behaviour, cognition and human-animal interactions. As a founder of the Clever Dog Lab and the Wolf Science Center, Zsófia has conducted most of her research on dogs and wolves, aiming at a better understanding of the effects of domestication on dogs’ reasoning and social learning abilities, relationships, communication and cooperation with humans and conspecifics. Deeply interested in how human and non-human animals differ and compare to each other, she has been comparing canines to children, primates and, most recently, to pigs kept under different conditions. She is passionate about formulating interdisciplinary research questions about human-animal cohabitation, and she is a module coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Master on Human-Animal Interactions at the Vetmeduni, Vienna. On the practical side, Zsófia has experiences with dog and wolf training, handling and training, animal-assisted therapy and service dog training.