Daniel Blumstein grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, escaping to the nearby wilderness to backpack, canoe, and mountaineer surrounded by plants and animals. Shortly after beginning college at the University of Colorado Boulder, in 1982, he realized that it was possible to make a career out of studying animal behavior. Thereafter, it was an easy decision for him to double major in environmental conservation and environmental, population, and organismic biology. After graduating, while cycling around the world, Blumstein happened upon a group of golden marmots (Marmota caudata)—cat-sized, semi-social rodents that live in burrows—in Khunjerab National Park in Pakistan, kicking off a decades-long interest in marmots that persists to this day.
He completed a PhD in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis in 1994, and eventually landed a faculty position at the University of California, Los Angeles. As an ethologist, he studies social and antipredator behaviors in many ...
