Studio · Thesis · Founder · Method
What we evolved for
WildWooHoo Studio is a production company for the animal kingdom, including us. The studio's intellectual core asks one question: what we evolved for, versus what we are putting ourselves into. We work from behavioural ecology and animal sociality, and we run two wings: Music and Entertainment for popular-culture reach, and Research and Educational for the science and learning underneath. Founded and led by Dr WELI.
Two wings,
one studio
- Music and Entertainment. Songs, music videos, films, characters, narrative IP, and tools made for the music and entertainment industries. Featured artist: WELI. Sits inside ABS Arts and Recreation Services and Information Media and Telecommunications.
- Research and Educational. Research-led children's media, books, school formats, apps, and public engagement that ask how the brains and societies we evolved with fit the screens and environments we now live in. Sits inside ABS Education and Training and Professional, Scientific and Technical Services.
- One thesis. Behavioural ecology gives Music and Entertainment its angle; Music and Entertainment gives Research and Educational its reach. Research and Educational gives the studio's music its credibility.
- One operating entity. Founded by Dr WELI in Sydney, run as a sole trader through 2026, Pty Ltd target Q3 2026. Three-domain architecture: drweli.com is the founder; wildwoohoo.com is the studio; wildwoohoo.com.au is the shop.
Meet the founder
Dr WELI - creative director, behavioural ecologist, recording artist
Brazilian born, Sydney based. Weliton Menário Costa designs cultural experiences, workshops, and programs through music, movement, and storytelling, connecting science, performance, and public culture.
WildWooHoo is his creative studio: where a PhD on kangaroo personality (ANU, where he is now a CPAS Visiting Fellow) becomes songs, videos, animation, books, and public moments that reach far beyond the lab. The flagship work, Kangaroo Time, won Science Magazine's Dance Your PhD 2024 and travelled through 238+ outlets worldwide. Falling Walls Engage 2025 Top 30, for transforming science into compelling public communication.
The lens stays the same across every form: animal behaviour, sociality, and evolution, refracted through witty songwriting, popular culture, traditions, and the ecosystems we share. The artist surface is named simply WELI. The founder, academic, and science-communicator surface is Dr WELI. Same person, two professional names for two industries.
How we
create
A four-step process underneath every WildWooHoo project. Animal behaviour and ecology first. Emotion second. Story third. Output last.
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Step 01
Animal behaviour as muse
We begin with natural behaviour, an animal society, an ecosystem, or an environmental feeling.
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Step 02
Emotion as entry point
We shape music, imagery, rhythm, and language so audiences feel first and reflect second.
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Step 03
Interconnected storytelling
Human and non-human worlds are placed in relation, so the work creates recognition and social meaning at the same time.
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Step 04
Creative work with message
The output becomes a song, music video, children's series, book, classroom format, or public moment, designed to travel and carry the impact.
Method: Living Wild
The studio's field-immersion artistic-residency framework. Go where wild animals are, embed with field scientists on their research, live the moment with the animals, and bring it home as music, movement, image, and sound. The groundwork every song, film, and learning program grows from.
The work starts in the field.
What it is. Kangaroo Time came from years living alongside real kangaroos. Living Wild makes that the method: go where wild animals are, live the moment with them, and bring it home as creative work. Dr WELI embeds with field scientists on their research, then turns the lived experience of the animal into songs, films, photography, and field recordings that feed the studio's projects, and stand alone as wildlife storytelling.
Built with field scientists, not just about them. Their fieldwork gets cultural reach and documentation; the studio gets the lived truth of the animal. Two-way, every time. Australia first, then the wider world the science reaches.
Residency targets 2026 to 2027. Bundanon AIR (NSW South Coast), Australian World Heritage Residency (Creative Australia), ANAT Synapse (art-science), Bogong Centre for Sound Culture (Alpine VIC), Nature Foundation SA (conservation reserves). ICIP discipline: WELI in an allied and supporting role on First Nations content; cultural advisors paid, not thanked.
Open to collaborate. Wildlife cinematographers, field-sound recordists, field scientists with upcoming fieldwork that would welcome a few days of creative company.
Project line: Mirror Worlds
Dr WELI's named creative angle inside WildWooHoo. A continuing body of work that takes behavioural research, kangaroo personality, goat hierarchy, ecological change, and translates it into songs, videos, and screen formats that draw the parallel back to human life. Mirror Worlds is the spine; the studio's releases and programs are its current chapters.
Structural
reference
- The musical and popular-culture version of the Jane Goodall Foundation. WildWooHoo Studio shares Jane Goodall Institute's APE philosophy (Animals, People, Environment), education-through-storytelling at scale, cross-species framing as a moral and emotional argument, and reach across both youth and adult ethical-consumer audiences. The studio replaces the conservation-program lens with the music and entertainment lens.
- Downstream of the citizen, through art. BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash) works upstream of the citizen through policymakers and program managers; their outputs are contract research reports, intervention designs, training certificates. WildWooHoo works downstream of the citizen through audience body; the outputs are songs, performances, community formats. Different room, different volume, same scientific spine.
- Named-artist lead. Where BehaviourWorks delivers institutionally anonymous research, WildWooHoo leads with Dr WELI as named founder and creative director; releases credit WELI as the artist. The artistic-research register is named explicitly.
- Felt experience over policy instruction. Cross-species symmetry as the core proposition, not a flavour. Density of room transformed, not scale of student head-count.
Studio
identity
- Operating entity. Weliton Menário Costa sole trader, ABN 61 239 662 726. Pty Ltd target Q3 2026.
- Three domains. drweli.com is Dr WELI the person (artist plus academic plus speaker). wildwoohoo.com is the studio. wildwoohoo.com.au will be the shop.
- Persona names. WELI is the pop artist credit. Dr WELI is the academic, science-communicator, and studio-founder credit. Dr Weliton Menário Costa is the formal legal and scholarly citation.
- Brand kit v5. Single mark, wordmark, palette, type, monochrome-at-rest with full-spectrum-at-interaction principle. Locked.
- Editorial chain. Writer, cowriter, reviewer, editor, chief-editor. Anything over AU$50K or competition rate under 15% runs through the full chain.