A p e T a n k | Know thy Origins
Our team*+ researches the origins of human behaviour and mind, and are focused on shedding insight into language origins, dance and music evolution, and the precursors of imagination.Why, in more than 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, did these motoric and cognitive systems emerge from our ape-like ancestors, but no other animal lineage? How did the biology and behaviour of our hominid ancestors pave the path towards "humanhood"?We study great apes as living replicas of our own extinct ancestors, their communication, cognition and culture, and we complement this by studying children. We rely on behavioural observations and experiments in the wild and accredited zoos to assemble real-world data, and we test children in our department's baby lab.We are committed to using new research and evidence for sophisticated traits in great apes and new insights into human mind's building blocks to (i) improve primate welfare & husbandry in captivity, (ii) advocate primate conservation & protection in the wild, (iii) inform superior bio-inspired computer modelling and AI applications and (iv) advise stakeholders and law-makers.
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Fresh from the Press | Recent featured articles
Chimpanzee utterances refute purported missing links for novel vocalizations and syllabic speechwith Axel Ekström, Jens Edlund, Steven Moran Scientific Reports, 2024 |
Isochrony as ancestral condition to call and song in a primatewith Marco Maiolini, Teresa Raimondi, Filippo Carugatil, Longondraza Miaretsoa, Daria Valente, Valeria Tortil, Cristina Giacoma, Andrea Ravignani, Marco Gamba Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2024 |
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The ontogeny of nest-building behaviour in Sumatran orang-utans, Pongo abeliiwith Junaidi Jaka Permana, Lara Nellissen, Didik Prasetyo, Serge Wich, Carel van Schaik, Caroline Schuppli Animal Behaviour, 2024 |
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