Vanessa Woods

Vanessa Woods is a research scientist, award-winning journalist, and New York Times bestselling author whose work bridges rigorous science and vivid storytelling. A research scientist at the Duke Canine Cognition Center and Director of the Duke Puppy Kindergarten, she co-founded Dognition with her husband and research partner, Dr. Brian Hare, to bring the science of canine cognition to dog owners everywhere.

Born in Australia, Woods holds a Master's degree in Science Communication from the Australian National University. Since 2005 she has worked as a research scientist at Duke University, where her research has taken her deep into the field — studying bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo and chimpanzees in the Republic of Congo to understand the evolutionary roots of cooperation, friendliness, and what ultimately makes us human.

Her writing has reached a global audience, with books published in twelve languages and hundreds of popular-science articles in outlets including The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, New Scientist, BBC Wildlife, and the Huffington Post. As the main Australian and New Zealand feature writer for the Discovery Channel, and through her bestselling books, she has become one of the most compelling popular voices in the science of animal minds.

Vanessa Woods studies the evolution of cognition and cooperation — what the social lives of our closest relatives can teach us about ourselves. Her fieldwork comparing bonobos and chimpanzees explores why bonobos evolved a remarkably peaceful society, and what that tells us about the role of friendliness and tolerance in evolution. This work is foundational to the "survival of the friendliest" thesis she and Brian Hare advance in their writing and research.

At Duke, her focus extends to canine cognition and development. As Director of the Duke Puppy Kindergarten, she leads a pioneering study of how puppies develop the cognitive and emotional skills that shape who they become — research aimed at understanding what makes a great companion or service dog, and how those qualities emerge over a dog's earliest months.

This developmental, science-driven perspective is woven directly into Dognition's approach: understanding not just how a dog thinks, but how that mind grows and changes over a lifetime.

Vanessa Woods is the co-author, with Brian Hare, of three acclaimed books on dogs and the evolution of cognition:

• Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog (2024) — The science of how puppies develop into great dogs, drawn from the Duke Puppy Kindergarten she directs.
• Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity (2020) — A New York Times bestseller on how friendliness drove human evolution.
• The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think (2013) — The New York Times bestseller that launched the popular science of dog cognition.

She is also the author of the acclaimed memoir Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo (2010), winner of the Lowell Thomas Award, and a celebrated writer of children's science books — including It's True! Space Turns You Into Spaghetti, winner of the Royal Society's Young People's Book Award in 2007. In 2003, she won the Australasian Science Award for journalism.

Woods's work and writing have been featured across major international media, including The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, New Scientist, BBC Wildlife, and the Discovery Channel.

She appears alongside Brian Hare in the 2024 Netflix documentary Inside the Mind of a Dog, narrated by Rob Lowe, and her books have drawn praise from voices ranging from Anderson Cooper to Alan Alda. Through her writing, fieldwork, and public science communication, she has helped bring the inner lives of animals — from bonobos to puppies — to readers around the world.

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