Public Biography
Dr. Lorna Whitfield is a marsupial behavioral ecologist at the University of Western Australia and one of the world’s foremost authorities on quokka parental behavior. She has spent nineteen years conducting field observations on Rottnest Island, a tenure she describes as “the minimum viable timeframe for drawing preliminary conclusions about any species.”
Dr. Whitfield holds a Ph.D. in behavioral ecology from the University of Melbourne, where her doctoral thesis, “Involuntary Pouch Dynamics Under Acute Stress in Setonix brachyurus,” was described by her committee chair as “exhaustively thorough.” She has published over forty peer-reviewed papers on marsupial stress responses, parental investment theory, and what she terms “the systematic misrepresentation of macropod behavior in popular media.”
She is a frequent expert witness in animal welfare cases and has testified before the Australian Senate’s Environment and Communications Committee on three occasions, each time requesting that the committee “please stop using the word ’throw’ in official transcripts when referring to quokka maternal behavior.” The committee has not complied.
Dr. Whitfield lives on Rottnest Island for approximately nine months of the year and in Perth for the remaining three, a ratio she considers “a reasonable compromise with human society.”