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.

*Principal investigator: Adriano R. Lameira
⁺Join us! We have open positions.