Animal Behaviour and Psychology

A Combined Honours degree at Chester gives you the opportunity to study two subjects. You will spend a fairly even amount of time studying each subject area, with possible opportunities to declare a major – minor towards the end of your studies.<br/><br/>**Animal Behaviour**<br/><br/>Explore the fascinating science of animal behaviour, focusing on animals in their natural habitats, including ecological, conservation and welfare contexts.<br/>Develop vital employer-desired skills while studying the ever-interesting field of animal behaviour. With an emphasis on free-living wild animals, you will follow a scientifically driven course that develops your fundamental skills and knowledge and then uses them in cutting-edge applied contexts such as conservation and welfare sciences. <br/><br/>Whilst the emphasis is mainly on wild animals, you can study behaviour in more managed environments: e.g. determining best husbandry and conservation breeding for endangered animals in zoos; best practice pet welfare; and farm animal management. Our staff have real enthusiasm for their subject and bring great expertise from their research fields.<br/><br/>This course is firmly rooted in the biological sciences and adopts a rigorous scientific approach to the study of the behaviour of animals. As well as exploring the behaviour of charismatic animals, we embrace a wide taxonomic range of species and have a good focus on some of the groups less emphasised elsewhere, such as amphibians and invertebrates. These groups have really interesting behaviour in their own right, but are also a crucial part of temperate and tropical ecosystems – understanding their behaviour is vital for wider habitat conservation.<br/><br/>**Psychology**<br/>Delve deep into the mind and discover more about how people think, behave and feel on our BPS-accredited Psychology degree.<br/><br/>The School of Psychology at Chester offers degrees accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS). The course structure allows you to study a wide range of areas of psychology through optional modules at all levels, alongside the core modules required for BPS accreditation.<br/><br/>If you’re interested in a professional career in psychology, there are specialist routes through the course where you can take relevant elective modules at each level. This degree will also equip you with a variety of employability skills, including literacy, numeracy, critical appraisal, data handling, communication and logical problem-solving skills.<br/><br/>We also offer an optional further year of study abroad that you take between your second and third years of study. As this is an additional year, this means you can use this as an opportunity to pursue areas of study of your choice, whilst exploring another country and culture.