ABOUT US
A new way of doing things
Founded in 2019, Danaus EthoDesign is an advisory focused on ethology and animal welfare that looks for the improve of facilities and relationships between individuals in a 100% personalized way for customers.
From Danaus EthoDesign we seek to address all the problems related to the behaviour of animals, the design of the facilities or the handling of the different species. These are the reasons why we work with a multidisciplinary team, which includes a wide network of professionals related to the design of facilities and the study of animal behaviour (neuroethologists, architects, graphic designers, enrichment specialists, etc.). Thanks to this, we achieve high quality, creative projects which respond to the individual characteristics of each of our clients.
ETHOLOGICAL TEAM
MARÍA ABELLÁN
Doctor in neuroetology
María Abellán Álvaro was born in Valencia in 1991. She finished her degree in Biology at the University of Valencia in 2013 and then she started her Master's degree studies in Neurosciences at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In this master, she studied how individuals process emotional and physical stressful stimuli (predators, immobilizations, etc.) and the effect that they have on animals. After completing this master's degree, she studied her second master's degree at the University of Valencia in 2015, focused on the training of secondary school teachers in the field of biology. After that, she began her doctoral studies in Neurosciences at University of Valencia in 2019. Her thesis project was focused on the study of maternal behaviour, mainly in maternal aggression and its regulation in the central nervous system. During her doctoral studies she made an internship at the Behavioural Biology Centre in Mexico, where she studied the different types of maternal behaviour in lagomorphs and including maternal aggression. In her free time, she tries to collaborate as a volunteer in wildlife recovery centres where she works as a sampling and veterinary assistant.
MARÍA FIGUEROLA
Landscape architect specialized in Animal Welfare
María Figuerola is specialized in the conservation part of the Biology Degree. After finishing her Biology degree at University of Valencia she worked one year in a wildlife rescue centre in Costa Rica. During this time in Costa Rica she carried out different tasks, she was on charge of the enrichment and the design of facilities for animals of the centre and also, she was involved in psittacides training. After that year she decided to return to Spain in order to increase their knowledge in the practical area of animal welfare. She completed a Master's Degree in Primatology at University of Girona, where she wrote her master's thesis focus on the design of the facilities and their impact on animal welfare, under the supervision of the landscape architect Jon Coe. She also studied the Master of Landscape Architecture at University of A Coruña to specialize in the design of facilities in zoological centres. The objective of her projects is to improve the quality of wildlife animals in captivity, reaching a state of well-being, so that they can become ambassadors of their species. The way to achieve this is to create spaces that empower them and generate a relationship of respect with the visitor, a key emotion for the awareness and conservation of wildlife exsitu.