Our team*+ 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.
*Principal investigator: Adriano R. Lameira +Join us! We have opened positions.
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Fresh from the Press | Recent featured articles
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Sociality predicts orangutan vocal phenotype
with Guillermo SantamarĂa-Bonfil, Deborah Galeone, Marco Gamba, Madeleine E. Hardus, Cheryl Knott, Helen Morrogh-Bernard, Matthew G. Nowak, Gail Campbell-Smith, Serge Wich Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2022 Go to paper (Open access)Link opens in a new window
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Orangutan information broadcast via consonant-like and vowel-like calls breaches mathematical models of linguistic evolution
with Antonio Alexandre, Marco Gamba, Matthew Nowak, Raquel Vicente, Serge Wich Biology Letters, 2021 Go to paperLink opens in a new window
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Chimpanzee lip-smacks confirm primate continuity for speech-rhythm evolution
with Andre Pereira, Eithne Kavanagh, Catherine Hobaiter, Katie Slocombe Biology Letters, 2020 Go to paperLink opens in a new window
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