With kangaroos, Brazilian wins contest and Eurovision ribbon – 03/16/2024 – Science

Weliton Menário Costa, 32, felt like he never fit in anywhere in life. He went to Australia, researching the behavior, diversity and personality of kangaroos, beings logically distant from the Brazilian environmental reality, which he found himself. He danced for a doctorate and now dreams and takes his first steps towards the stage — and, who knows, even the European Eurovision competition.

At the end of February, the traditional Science magazine announced the winners of Dance your Ph.D, a name that literally indicates the intention of the competition: to explain doctoral projects through dance videos. The initiative has existed since 2008 and has had other Brazilian winners. In 2024, winners in the biology, chemistry, physics and social sciences categories received US$750 (R$3,745). The big winner, which was Costa, receives, in addition to this amount, US$2,000 (R$9,986).

The competition was sponsored by quantum technology and artificial intelligence company SandboxAQ.

Costa, better known as Weli, completed his doctorate on eastern gray kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) who live in Wilsons Promontory National Park.

The truth is that kangaroos have never been the target or an imagined objective in the past. They were almost accidental, the result of the desire to study behavior. Weli’s desire, in fact, was to leave where she was and seek new possibilities in life.

Born in the rural area, in Ribeirão do Meio, a community in the small Espírito Santo Conceição do Castelo, which has almost 12 thousand people, Weli only knew the reality of the countryside. “That was my future,” he says. “I couldn’t dream, for financial reasons or because there was nothing there… There was no park, there was nothing, I played in the cornfield.”

Moving forward in history, came high school training at Ifes (Federal Institute of Espírito Santo) and a degree in biology at the same institute, and a scholarship from the now extinct Sciences Without Borders program that finally took Weli to Australia.

When he returned to Brazil, he felt he had to leave again. Without completing his master’s degree, he entered directly into his doctorate at the Australian National University, a period that, in addition to being part of the Covid pandemic, led to Weli falling ill.

The truth is that the researcher felt frustrated. Despite being in the process of pursuing her doctorate and academic life, Weli really thought about singing. “In the country, I was there singing alone, I had no training whatsoever, and it was bad, right? I wasn’t like, I don’t know, Paula Fernandes who sang and her mother gave up everything and moved to São Paulo. I sang and I They told me to shut up”, says the singer-researcher.

It was during her doctorate that, in addition to developing her project with kangaroos, Weli further developed her artistic flair, taking singing and dancing classes, and writing songs. There was even a band during the period, but it didn’t take off because the kangaroos required a lot of time in field activities.

To research the personality and behavior of these marsupials, Weli, in one of his experiments, brought a remote-controlled car closer to the animals, something that, as far as we know, they had never seen. The interest was to discover what their individual and collective reaction would be. As the video for Weli’s song shows, there are the most curious kangaroos that approach the machine, those that run and those that just watch. The contact lasted about three minutes, for there to be something beyond the immediate reaction.

“I let them respond in the social context. Because they are animals that have a very present social context in life. So I wanted to know if, when they behave, if they follow their personality or if they adjust to the group”, he says the researcher-singer.

In another experiment, Weli himself walked towards the kangaroos until the animals moved away from him. The idea was to measure the distance allowed by them.

This experiment even placed Weli very close to a kangaroo approximately his weight and height that, the previous year, had killed another kangaroo. “He was my biggest threat,” he says. “I still remember the distance to this day: it was 6 meters. I got to 8 meters, it didn’t go away. I got to 6 and I said: ‘I’m not going to get to 5’. Then he ran away.”

At the same time, the researcher contextualizes and alleviates the kangaroo’s side. He says kangaroos are not predators, but rather prey, so especially wild ones are more prone to escape rather than attack responses.

The last experiment was to play music for the kangaroos and study their reactions. And, no, Weli didn’t use her own songs. “I wasn’t making music at the time. But if I had, I definitely would have used it.”

One of the findings of this experiment was that kangaroos don’t like Dua Lipa. To be fair, they are easily scared by sung songs — so Weli only used instrumentals.

With all the data collected in the experiments, the singer-researcher says he came to the conclusion that kangaroos have their own personalities, but that they adapt to the group they are in, and such changes happen quite frequently.

“The difference between groups is greater than the difference between individuals. What this indicates is that they prefer to conform to the behavior of everyone in the group rather than follow their own personality”, says Weli.

All of this can be summed up with “Kangaroo Time”, the song and video that won the overall Dance Your Ph.D. competition. The video is self-explanatory, but in it Weli used dance —logically— to show the relationships between personality, behavior and groups.

One of the ideas in the video was to try to represent the diversity of behaviors and personalities. “I was clear from the beginning that I wanted ballet people, funk people, to have this diversity from the classical to the urban. And I wanted drag queens to also communicate with the LGBT community, which is extremely important”, says Weli.

And, from now on, the artistic field is Weli’s desire. “It doesn’t mean that this is what it will be forever, right? I think that now I need to dedicate myself to the creative part. Science is limited in reality and that’s how it has to be. But I really miss being creative” , says the singer, who already has an EP on Spotify called “Yours Academically, Dr. WELI” — which, logically, includes “Kangaroo Time”.

In fact, when “Kangaroo Time” was ready, the perception arose that, perhaps, the song would go well in the international Eurovision competition. The contest, according to Weli, even got in touch to use the singer’s video (not for the competition, which already has participants defined for 2024; Australia will be represented by the duo Electric Fields, with the song “One Milkali (One Blood) “), but, to date, nothing has been posted on the Eurovision networks.

(You might be thinking, “But Australia isn’t in Europe.” Yes, but it still takes part in Eurovision.)

However, there is always the next Eurovision. “Now you have to do the marketing,” says Weli.

In any case, an award has already come for Weli and other rewards as well, such as seeing her father go on the community radio to talk about the song and her mother sharing the song among the group of teachers in her city. “People loved the music; my mom, my grandmother, my dad, everyone embraced the music,” she says.

Even trying to dive into music, Weli’s research streak is still there. “My biggest validation as a scientist was making music, making videos, being creative,” she says. “Art, music, culture and science. It’s the fusion of everything. I’ve never felt so much like a scientist. I couldn’t say ‘I’m a biologist’. Today I say I’m a scientist, I’m a singer, I’m a creator.”