Our team at ApeTank researches the origins of human behaviour and psychology. We are tantalized about language origin, 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 in our lineage, but none other? How did ancient primates and ape-like ancestors pave the path towards modernity and "humanhood"? We study great ape and children capacities as living replicas of our own extinct ancestors' communication, cognition and culture, their form and function. We rely on behaviour, audio and video observations and experiments in the child lab and in the wild and accredited zoos to assemble real-world data. 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.

MSc, University of Lisbon, Portugal PhD, Utrecht University, the Netherlands