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11 Oct 2022
Language, anthropomorphism, and metaphor in science, and translating Kinji Imanishi and the flow of Japanese primatology with Dr. Pamela Asquith
This episode presents an interview with Dr. Pamela Asquith, and anthropologist and meta-primatologist who has studied how primatology was done historically in Japan, and tackled the challenge of language, metaphor and anthropomorphism in science.
In March 2022, she delivered an excellent talk for CICASP in our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives in the Field. You can find a link to that event here, or go straight to the CICASP YouTube Channel and find it here.
The interview is not a carbon-copy of the lecture, so I'm sure one can find value in both!
Pam is perhaps best known around here as the person who translated - with support from colleagues in Japan - Kinji Imanishi's seminal 1941 book Seibutsu no Sekai 「生物の世界」into English, under the title: "A Japanese View of Nature: The World of Living Things". Imanishi is considered a founder of Japanese primatology- he set up Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute itself! - and was especially instrumental in giving it the flavor it had that set it apart from primatology as it emerged somewhat independently in the West.
Some of the topics we cover during the conversation include:
understanding primatology through the lens of history and philosophy, and how Eastern and Western cultural trends influenced the trajectory of the field
the challenges of anthropomorphism and metaphor in science and the study of animal behavior
meta-primatology and the process of studying those who study primates, especially in Japan
marginalization in science, sometimes caused by language constraints and cultural influences on thought
the legend that is Kinji Imanishi, his views on nature, and his influence on Japanese primatology and beyond
For anyone interested in finding out more about her work, you can visit Dr. Pamela Asquith's website, and check out her book A Japanese View of Nature: The World of Living Things on
This episode features distinguished primatologist Dr. Charles Snowdon, or Chuck Snowdon, as he’s maybe better known by.
Chuck is Hilldale Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and he’s widely known for his work on primate social development, communication and cognition. He ran the Snowdon Primate Center in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where so much was learned about the small Neotropical primates known as marmosets and tamarins.
In the interview, we deep dive one specific topic that Chuck has worked on over the past couple of decades: musicality in nonhumans!
Some of our topics of conversation include:
the integration of art and science, STEAM, and collaborating with musicians
how our appreciation of music evolves and affects our mood
making music for monkeys... and why it matters
and many more!
Here's a great quote from Chuck from a 2009 article published in the Guardian: “Why should a tamarin find our music comforting? I find the monkey music quite irritating.”
You can read the paper on which a lot of our conversation was based in an article published in the journal Biology Letters (Paywall). There's also more music for tamarins in the supplementary material of that article as well!
In the interview, Chuck also references Snowball, a cockatoo who became YouTube famous for its ability to dance to the beat of popular music. This bird was also the focal point of our conversation with Dr. John Iversen, another fascinating conversation I had when he visited Japan for the Japan Society for Animal Psychology conference back in 2014. He's the middle interview in The PrimateCast 22.
This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program at Kyoto University. We are releasing the audio from these lectures right here on The PrimateCast: Origins.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to the CICASP TV YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
For the 8th international primatology lecture we invited Dr. John Mitani to share his origin story with us. This lecture took place on January 27, 2022.
----- "If you find good [mentors], lean on them" -John Mitani, 2022 -----
John Mitani is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, who has conducted over 40 years of research on gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos.
He is the 2022 recipient of the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Biological Anthropologists. And, listening to his lecture really gives one a sense of why! So much of his work found its way into the textbooks.
In the lecture, he shares many of the key discoveries he and his colleagues have made about social behavior in primates. These covered topics like:
territoriality and indices of home range defensibility
how ape vocalizations play a role in territorial defense and spacing
how male orangutans can have hugely different mating strategies that coincide with huge differences in body size and other physical features
how chimpanzee social behavior and alliances are determined by genetic relationships among males
He then goes on to provide some sage advice for any up-and-coming scholars out there. He spends a good deal of time acknowledging his mentors, and implores all of us to do the same. He also acknowledges the importance of serendipity, and the need to be opportunistic in the face of new observations.
With eloquence and humility, John tells us the story of his career, in the hopes it can provide some inspiration to those of us out there on similar paths.
One thing's for sure: I sure felt inspired after hearing him speak!
Briana’s anthropological research focuses on understanding the human diet, and changes therein over the past few million years. Her work on science education and communication focuses on promoting understanding of evolution through examples from our own bushy branches of the evolutionary family tree.
In the interview, we cover a range of topics including:
the question "what makes us human?"
reconstructing the diets of our ancestors using paleontological 'time machines'
ancient hominins sharing the savannas - and food? - with ancient carnivores
busting some common myths, like the idea of linear evolution and the 'paleodiet'
balancing doing, teaching and communicating science to broad audiences
how to go about becoming a strong communicator of scientific ideas
being a mom in the field with kids
There is so much in this interview for everyone, and we couldn't be happier to be sharing it on The PrimateCast.
Here are a few links to help you learn more about Briana Pobiner and her work:
This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program at Kyoto University. We are releasing the audio from these lectures right here on The PrimateCast: Origins.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to the CICASP TV YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
For the 12th international primatology lecture we invited distinguished professor Dr. Mewa Singh to share his origin story with us. This lecture took place on May 25, 2022.
----- "One need not have a formal degree in a discipline, to become a specialist in that discipline" -Mewa Singh, 2022 -----
Dr. Mewa Singh is Life-Long Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Excellence at the University of Mysore. Throughout his career he has investigated the behavior and ecology of mammals, most notably primates, and has been heavily invested in their conservation and management in different regions throughout India.
In this lecture, he describes his activities related to the conservation of primates in India, particularly through distinctions between forest-dependent species and others that are more adaptable to human-dominated landscapes. He then describes various behavioral adaptations that have allowed more commensal macaque species to thrive in urban settings.
Key topics that come up are:
genetic diversity in lion-tailed macaques with respect to habitat fragmentation
protecting habitat and regrowing wildlife corridors with rainforest trees
primate commensalism and behavioral plasticity in urban environments
acquisition of novel foraging strategies as adaptations to extracting human resources
He begins the lecture talking about how he became a wildlife biologist and primatologist, and that it wasn't exactly a straight line or so predetermined from a young age. And he closes with some further advice about studying primates ethically in human landscapes.
In between, he provides numerous pieces of advice and bits of wisdom that will no doubt have value for all listeners.
This episode is all about where, how and why primates got their names!
No, we won't be talking about popular primates like Kanzi the bonobo or Pan-kun (if you're in Japan), but rather the terms we use for the common and scientific names of primates across their taxonomy.
Dr. Elaine Guevara is a Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, and in 2021, she coauthored a study published in the International Journal of Primatology called “Whom do primate names honor: rethinking primate eponyms” (Open Access), along with Chloe Chen-Kraus, Casey Farmer, Katherine Meier, David P. Watts & Jane Widness.
----------- Eponym (noun): one for whom or which something is or is believed to be named. -----------
In the interview, we do a deep dive into primate names and the various contexts within which they are given. Key topics of discussion include:
colonial roots of primate naming
honorifics, hero worship and challenge of getting it right
decolonizing science and having dialogues toward greater inclusivity in science and society
Verreaux's sifaka, Geoffroy's spider monkey, Dian's tarsier and the Bemaraha woolly monkey (a.k.a. Avahi cleesei), whose epithet (species name) honors John Cleese!
pronunciation and the challenge of Anglicization
better ways to name as conceived by the international primatological community
----------- CORRECTION At 1:00:02 of the interview Elaine notes that the term 'maias' - suggested by JM Rubis (2020) to replace the established common name orangutan - is an indigenous Malay term, when in fact it is the term used by the Iban, a group indigenous to the island of Borneo. -----------
For more information, and to contribute to understanding primate names and what we should do about them, explore these links!
Primate Eponyms website - learn more about primate namesakes and contribute if information for your species is missing!
Survey for primatologists (at all career stages!) where you can provide your thoughts on primate eponyms. CLICK HERE!
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
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Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
27 Jan 2023
A Conversation about animal cognition and emotions, anthropomorphism versus anthropodenial, and the power of storytelling in science with distinguished Professor Emeritus Dr. Frans de Waal
This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program at Kyoto University. We are releasing the audio from these lectures right here on The PrimateCast: Origins.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to the CICASP TV YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
Unlike our normal format for these lectures, in which our guests normally provide us with an origin story lecture, we instead ran IPLS 18 as an interview with Distinguished Professor Emeritus Dr. Frans de Waal. Frans almost needs no introduction, but you can find out more about him through some links to Emory University here and here, and on his Wikipedia page here.
The interview was conducted by Dr. Michael Huffman and yours truly, with a smattering of questions from participants, including students and postdoctoral researchers affiliated with Kyoto University’s program in primatology and wildlife science.
The conversation was recorded on Wednesday, January 18, 2023.
In the interview, we talk about:
his book Chimpanzee Politics and communicating science and writing popular books
English, writing and storytelling as a non-native English speaker, and extending rigorous scientific research into popular science prose
the responsibility of scientists to communicate their findings when they relate to society and how their ideas might be coopted for certain agendas end users may have - think Konrad Lorenz falling in with eugenicists or Richard Dawkins calling us 'slaves to our genes'
how our views of the pillars of primate society have evolved from competition, aggression, dominance and conflict to peacemaking, conflict resolution and cooperation
drawing the line between anthropomorphism and anthropodenial, and what components of animal cognition and emotion overlap with those of humans
how measuring emotions in animals is not the same thing as understanding their 'feelings', for example grief, which was asked about by an audience member
“You should always collaborate with your friends!” - Sarah Brosnan
In this episode I am really excited to be able to bring to you an interview with Dr. Sarah Brosnan, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Philosophy and Neuroscience in the Language Research Center at Georgia State University.
Dr. Ikuma Adachi, from Kyoto University's Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior, also joined us for the interview.
Sarah Brosnan is probably best known for her work on inequity aversion in primates. Her early experiments published in Nature [Monkeys reject unequal pay] showed that capuchin monkeys are sensitive to what others receive for the same amount of work and reject unequal pay.
Note that the video of these experiments is absolutely delightful and should be required viewing for every student of nature, the nature of the mind, and probably bratty child out there. Check it out here: capuchin monkey fairness experiment.
In the interview, Sarah explains how inequity aversion is likely a key component of social knowledge, and likely evolved as a suite of abilities linked to prosocial behavior.
After discussing some of the nuts and bolts of experimentation and the challenges of interpretation, we move into Sarah's more recent line of research: comparative experimental economics.
What's fascinating about this work is that Sarah is testing multiple different species of primate - capuchins, macaques, chimpanzees, and humans - by setting them up with more or less identical experimental situations.
These experiments are really allowing Sarah and her colleagues to learn the mechanical foundations of how we make decisions; and how they may be the same or very different foundations to those of other species even when the outcomes - like being able to maximize the payoff in any given game - look exactly the same!
I learned a lot from Sarah in this interview, and had an absolute blast with this conversation! I hope you all enjoy this interview with Dr. Sarah Brosnan as much as I did.
Other topics discussed in the interview:
“Let the monkeys show you the way” as a foundation for scientific discovery
Maximizing interpretability through well-designed experiments … and follow-ups!
How widespread inequity aversion is in the animal kingdom
Whether spite is likely among the suite of emotionally-driven behaviors available to animals
Getting into the weeds with games for game theorists
Being careful not to confuse cause and consequence as mechanism and outcome
testing cognition in group settings and all the chaos that brings
This episode features a conversation with Dr. Tesla Monson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Western Washington University.
Tesla was in Japan visiting our own Dr. Susumu Tomiya to start some work with our collection of primate bones, so I asked Susumu to join us in the studio as well.
Tesla runs the Primate Evolution Lab at Western Washington University, and has conducted some fascinating research into how we can use bones and fossils and especially teeth to understand the “squishy parts” of our collective evolutionary past that don’t preserve, like the life history traits of an animal or its behavior.
Tesla tells us about some of her discoveries about correlated or patterned evolution that link tooth characteristics with other anatomical and physiological processes and allowed her and her colleagues to hypothesize about things like life history traits and behavior that aren’t preserved in the fossil record.
These include how dental patterns correlate with vitamin D delivery to infants in ancient populations of humans living in Arctic Beringia, or with prenatal growth rates and endocranial volume in catarrhine primates.
After hearing Tesla talk about these things I became a lot more interested in teeth myself, and what they can tell us about extinct species! But there’s a lot in this interview beyond teeth for anyone interested in evolution and the diversity of life, how scientists are often just like detectives, and just generally about being a whole person.
While discussing Tesla’s efforts in science communication, we talk about the phenomenon of imposter syndrome, which can affect anyone in any role but seems to be particularly common among academics, and especially in early career researchers. All three of us seemed to have something to say on the topic, as it’s an ongoing struggle for so many of us and any encouragement and open discussion about it may land with someone in need at the right time.
We close by looking at her current projects on inclusion in and out of science, such as
her symposia in Integrative Human Evolution, geared toward early career researchers and interdisciplinarity,
her involvement with the Bearded Ladies, who are out there to show the world that, to quote Tesla, “You don’t have to have a beard to be a scruffy paleontologist out in the field”,
and her efforts to highlight the key roles played by historical women in Washington, which she calls Washington Women.
Some other things that come up in the interview include:
This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program at Kyoto University. We are releasing the audio from these lectures right here on The PrimateCast: Origins.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to the CICASP TV YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
The conversation was recorded on Wednesday, April 5, 2023.
In the talk, Dr. Gladys moves from describing the events in her childhood that foreshadowed her career as a conservationist and wildlife veterinarian through the development of her career and efforts to conserve the endangered mountain gorillas of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda, largely by supporting the health of people living in the area.
being a wildlife vet for endangered gorillas and when to intervene
ecotourism for conservation
why health and economic stability is key to successful conservation of species
building the African Primatological Society to support African efforts for research and conservation of African primates
Dr. Gladys also recounts how devastating the COVID-19 pandemic was ecotourism in the region, and how she and others mobilized to ensure that the local community was vaccinated and had access to personal protective equipment such as masks and medical support so that the risk of transmission to the gorillas was minimized.
I found these stories incredibly inspiring, and endlessly insightful. Dr. Gladys’ passion for people and nature comes out in spades, and her model for conservation is one I’d love to see adopted all over the world as it has found a way to succeed through compa
This episode features a conversation with Devan Schowe, Campaigns Associate with animal advocacy and wildlife nonprofit, Born Free USA.
Born Free USA, and its parent Born Free, are charitable organizations advocating for animal welfare and compassionate conservation, with the ultimate goal of ending human exploitation of animals for any reason.
In the interview, Devan outlines the history of the organization - it has a very Hollywood origin story! - and all of the twists and turns that brought her to it.
We talk about some of her early experiences investigating the welfare of reptiles, and then about her master’s research on the welfare of coconut harvesting pig-tailed macaques in Thailand (published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science).
As Campaigns Associate, Devan is involved in many of the programs at Born Free USA, for example on the primate pet trade and the issues surrounding the fur trade in the USA.
Devan also talks about how people can get and have gotten involved in animal protection. To find out more, check out Born Free USA's activists toolkit.
We also get a bit into the legislation of animal protection in the US, and later talk about the ethics of animals in captivity, particularly at places like zoos which have a bit of an embattled reputation these days over whether their efforts to educate the public and conserve wildlife outweigh their struggles at times to provide quality welfare for all of their animals.
Other topics we cover in the interview:
what does the role Campaigns Associate at an animal advocacy group look like?
tracking social engagement for animal welfare and the Tiger King effect
Japanese macaques living in Texas!
compassionate conservation
leopard geckos
and more ...
Devan is clearly passionate about animals and their c
This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program at Kyoto University. We are releasing the audio from these lectures right here on The PrimateCast: Origins.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to the CICASP TV YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
For the 21st international primatology lecture we invited Dr. Fred Bercovitch to share his origin story with us. This lecture took place on May 10, 2023.
Fred was a professor with us in CICASP from 2010 until his retirement in March 2017. He was a key mentor for me and played a big role in helping our international program mature.
Starting his career studying primates and particularly the sexual behavior of baboons at Gilgil, Kenya, Fred's career meandered through developmental biology and reproductive neuroendocrinology of rhesus macaques at Cayo Santiago , mating behavior in Koalas in Australia, social structure of Giraffes in Zambia, and many more topics and species around the world.
Fred also forged a career integrating work at zoos and in the wilds, having spent time at San Diego Zoo's Conservation Institute. After leaving Japan, he helped launch a non-profit for giraffe conservation called Save the Giraffes, and is now a Board Member with the Anne Innis Dagg Foundation, also tackling giraffe conservation.
Two books that defined Fred's journey were Edgar Rice Burroughs'Tarzan of the Apes and Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. He weaves these into his life's work describing how he went from the 11 year old boy whose essay on the need to save our planet - part of which he reads in the show! - was not selected by his teachers to be read at graduation, to the renowned wildlife biologist and conservationist he is today.
Key topics that come up along the way are:
the importance of understanding Darwin's ideas on evolution for conservation
baboon and koala sex
giraffe social bonds and behavior
Listing of endangered species in IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species - and getting giraffes on it!
It was great to have Fred back in touch with us, and I'm happy to share his wise words with all of you on the podcast. For other episodes of The PrimateCast where Fred app
In this episode, conservationist, author and founder of The Orangutan Project, Leif Cocks.
Leif is a tireless conservationist who seems to be involved in innumerable conservation projects throughout Southeast Asia, but most notably The Orangutan Project, which he founded in 1998.
We talk about Leif’s path to conservation, which began early on with an interest in animals and nature and was formalized through his experiences in higher education and work in husbandry and small population biology at Perth Zoo.
What really stands out in this conversation is Leif’s passion for and commitment to being a defender of the natural world and all the beings living in it.
We get into orangutan conservation, including what he views as the pillars of successful orangutan reintroduction - physical health, mental health, social skills, and forest skills.
Leif describes how The Orangutan Project operates, emphasizing the importance of collective action and going far beyond just orangutan conservation into preservation of entire ecosystems and supporting local human communities living therein.
He also deftly describes the real challenges involved in conserving the rainforest’s megafauna, from supporting the endearingly “bat shit crazy” folks who manage to translocate elephants to safe areas, to getting people emotionally connected to the species and ecosystems that need saving.
I really appreciated Leif’s ability to unpack the nitty gritty of running a successful conservation effort, and the efforts they’ve made to assess the progress of the various initiatives they’ve sponsored.
We close out the conversation with some moral questions about personhood in nonhumans and the value of captivity for conservation at places like zoos.
Other topics we discuss:
orangutans and conservation translocations
animal culture
ecotourism to connect people with nature
Tinder meets Uber for elephant conservation!
Notable quotes from Leif:
on orangutans - "they're self aware persons that don't belong in captivity"
conservation needs "loving kindness and intelligent action"
on conservation challenges - "For every complex problem in the world there’s a simple solution which is absolutely wrong”
In this episode of The PrimateCast origins, we’re sharing a lecture given by wildlife biologist and conservationist Dr. Ian Redmond, OBE.
Ian is renowned for his work with gorillas and elephants in Africa. Through research, filming, ecotourism, and conservation science and activism, he’s spent over 40 years cultivating the wisdom and the network needed to inspire and incite real change.
In this lecture, Ian weaves an engaging tale around his experiences. His wonderful storytelling might make you feel, as I did, like you’re part of the story. And I think that’s one of Ian’s main points; that all of us are part of nature’s story and importantly can be part of its protectorate in lots of different ways.
His stories move effortlessly from African villagers to conservation icons to world leaders, and you get the sense that Ian is at home amongst all of them, never losing sight of the ultimate goal of protecting the planet and its diverse inhabitants.
He jokes about how he got himself to Karisoke research station to study gorillas by offering to fix Dianne Fossey’s leaky roof. And even has some fun stories about Sir David Attenborough during his filming for the iconic BBC series Life on Earth.
But its his descriptions of his time in the forests, with the gorillas and elephants, with the local people that live alongside them, which really sparks in us that sense of what might be lost if we fail to act on behalf of the Earth.
To that end, Ian leaves us with some ways to support conservation efforts, including some of the initiatives he’s been directly involved in over the years. Here’s where you might be surprised to learn about blockchains for elephants!
But it all seems to be part of the bigger picture of finding ways to assess the economic value of the ecosystem services species like elephants and gorillas provide, as the true gardeners of the forests.
It’s easy to get swept away by Ian’s easy nature, engaging rhetoric, and just his plain old dude with interesting stories vibe. But you’re going to learn a lot listening to this lecture.
Other topics covered and links to related organizations:
Reggie is an associate professor of psychology and animal behavior at Bucknell University in Lewisburg Pennsylvania. She and Ikuma overlapped as trainees in the lab of Dr. Robert Hampton at the now-named Emory National Primate Research Center.
In the interview here, we find out how her experiences in Rob’s lab translated into Reggie’s own approach to being a teacher-scholar at Bucknell University.
Since a large part of what Reggie does involves engaging, supporting and doing research alongside undergraduate students, I thought it fitting to ask for their input in designing the interview, which can be thought of as a sort of collaboration with them.
Along with Reggie riffing on Bunny the dog, teaching students like she trains her monkeys, and - spoiler alert! - why she won’t go to karaoke with her students, we talk at length about the nuts and bolts of doing comparative cognitive science, and particularly in the context of animals in social groups.
She really gets across in our conversation just how important it is to consider the rich social lives of animals when trying to design cognitive tests and understand how they think and why.
These are the kinds of things that would really matter to individual primates living under natural conditions, so it was great hearing Reggie’s thoughts on how this type of cognitive experimentation was gaining more and more traction, despite its many challenges!
In this episode of The PrimateCast origins, we’re sharing a lecture from primatologist and cognitive ethologist, Patricia Izar from the University of São Paulo.
Pat is one of the eminent Latin American primatologists, and along with her close friends and colleagues Drs. Dorothy Fragaszy and Elisabetta Visalberghi - see episode #68 for more on this from Elisabetta Visalberghi - she’s been studying the incredible tool use behavior of robust capuchins for the past few decades.
Pat walks us through a series of fascinating experiments with these charismatic monkeys - who by the way you can hear make a series of audio-only cameos in the background while she shows our Zoom audience some videos. Her target? Trying to understand what they know about the tools they use and what benefits they gain from using them.
Because of her long history of observing and experimenting with wild capuchins, she challenges the idea from laboratory experiments with captive-reared individuals that capuchins don’t understand how or why the tools they use work; a commonly held belief that, unlike humans, monkeys don’t really have a strong sense of the ‘folk physics’ underlying their behavior.
what environmental factors affect when and how capuchins use tools
how using tools might affect social relationships
the nutritional benefits of tool use in different seasons
Have you ever wondered how heavy those stones are?
playing with perception by providing huge stones that are light as a feather
Pat ends by talking about how this iconic behavior in capuchins can tell us a lot about the evolution of tool use in humans. By studying animals like capuchins, we can learn a lot about the kinds of conditions that are likely to have fostered this cognitively demanding behavior during our evolution.
Although she doesn’t mention it in the lecture, Pat is also a key figure in the profession and development of primatology, both locally in Brazil and internationally. She is currently the President of the Brazilian Society of Primatology, and serves t
In today’s origin story, Dr. Colin Chapman joined us over Zoom from his home on Vancouver Island to talk about, quote, “A Few Fun Things I have Learned Studying Primates".
Colin Chapman has a whole bunch of titles that are worth a quick once over: he is a Killam Research Fellow, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a fellow at Humboldt Foundation, a Wilson Fellow, holds an Office of an Academician, Northwest University, Xi’an, China and is a Conservation Fellow with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He’s also received a humanitarian award from the Velan Foundation.
Colin recently moved to Vancouver Island University to spend more time on his conservation efforts in and around Kibale National Park Uganda, where he’s spent so many of his years as one of the world’s most prominent primatologists.
In the lecture to follow, Colin unpacks what he’s learned about primate population dynamics over 34 plus years at Kibale. He talks about deforestation, bushmeat hunting and climate change, and importantly how research can allow us to make predictions about how these anthropogenic threats might affect primates in the future.
Colin closes with a series of take home messages like how it’s ok to make mistakes along the way, how scientists in more developed nations should use our privilege to focus on capacity building to support researchers in less fortunate circumstances, and why making sure to have fun is the key to longevity as a researcher.
yet their populations may not suffer the dramatic losses we expect
For anyone interested in hearing more from Colin, he was also on the podcast in Episode 39, where I asked him to reflect on then 26 years of research and conservation at Kibale.
We hope you enjoy this take from one of the world's leading primate scientists!
In today’s lecture, Dr. Paula Pebsworth joined us from her home in Texas to give a lecture titled “You never know where life will take you: an interdisciplinary and unconventional path”.
This lecture was extra special for me, because Paula and I were grad students together at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute over a decade ago, both under the supervision of Mike Huffman. I’ve missed my friend over the intervening years, along with her family - who also play a feature role in her talk - so it was wonderful getting back together for this event.
Apart from the normal dose of nostalgia that such reunions can bring, I was reminded of what we lost when the Primate Research Institute was restructured in the spring of 2022 - a place where minds met and grew together, where budding and rooted primatologists alike were mixed and incubated and sent off to do amazing things wherever life after PRI took them.
And what an interesting life Paula has had, both before and after her time in Japan. Paula is an independent scientist who has had professional roles as a Research Coordinator for Wildcliff Nature Reserve in South Africa, a Post-doctoral Research Associate and adjunct associate at the National Institute of Adv. Studies in Bangalore, India, a Scientific Coordinator at Cloudbridge Nature Reserve in Costa Rica, and a head scientist for an environmental consulting firm in Saudi Arabia.
Through it all, she has worked toward tackling the monumental challenge of managing human-nonhuman primate conflict and coexistence, the topic she spends most of the lecture covering in tantalizing detail.
But would you imagine that she started out her professional career as a chemist testing wine in the California vineyards? It doesn’t seem obvious, but Paula manages to weave this background into her studies of antiparasite strategies and self-medication in chimpanzees and baboons.
And no, she wasn’t getting her subjects drunk on wine! But you’ll have to stay tuned to find out how it all makes sense in the career of this thoughtful and innovative primatologist.
Paula has also agreed to follow this lecture up with a proper conversation for the primateCast, so stay tuned for part two in the near future. I took a lot of notes during her lecture and have a lot of things to follow up on.
For this episode, I sat down in the studio with evolutionary anthropologist Dr. Laura Buck in the Research Centre for Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology of Liverpool John Moores University.
Dr. Susumu Tomiya of CICASP also joined the conversation.
After waxing on the plausibility that some ancient hominins in cold climates might have hibernated - spoiler alert! Not very - Laura describes the evolutionary and developmental processes that lead to adaptations and behavioral responses to the cold.
Laura describes her current research, and how scientists might have overlooked a potentially critical evolutionary force among mammals: hybridisation.
We touch on the idea of genetic rescue for conservation, and whether the "grolar bear", a hybrid between grizzlies and polar bears, might - and that’s a controversial might! - might allow polar bear genes to survive climate warming in the arctic.
Laura’s work on hybridisation has focused on macaques, but she argues that what we learn from studying hybrid macaque bones can help us understand many of the mysteries of evolution.
She touches on the modern techniques used in geometric morphometrics - simply put, measuring bones in cool ways to understand evolutionary processes - including the future role of AI in the process.
Laura closes with the idea of niche construction, where it’s not only how we and other species adapt to the environments around us, but also how we change those environments ourselves, leading to the conclusion that in many ways we are responsible for our own environments of evolutionary adaptedness.
Other topics covered in the interview:
Non-adaptationist explanations and just-so stories in human evolution
Fieldwork fails with technology in scanning and measuring bones
In today’s installment of the podcast, I’m really excited to share a fascinating conversation I had with Dr. Tecumseh Fitch about the evolution of cognition and communication.
Tecumseh Fitch is Professor of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna where he co-founded the Department of Cognitive Biology and plays a leading role in the radically interdisciplinary Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, where they gather biologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and computer scientists, and mix them with linguists, philosophers and musicologists to really understand cognition and communication in its broadest sense.
But more than that, Tecumseh Fitch is an icon in the fields of cognitive biology and language evolution - he literally wrote the textbook on the The Evolution of Language. His mastery of these topics are on full display in this conversation, as are his storytelling skills.
“one way of seeing cognitive science is it’s the triumph of mentalism over behaviorism” (Tecumseh Fitch)
We ended up with a rich tapestry of insights into how language and cognition evolved, how they shape the lives of animals across the spectrum - from bees to naked mole rats to chimpanzees - and how they’ve set the scene for our own human experience.
So, if you want to hear us meander from American Civil War generals to the question of why dogs can’t dance, or find out why macaques could anatomically ask questions like “will you marry me” but to my knowledge are not known to have ever done so, then stick around for the next hour plus and I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
I always learn a lot through the conversations I have for The PrimateCast, but I gotta say that this one had me cognitively locked in. I hope it does the same for you.
Related episodes:
(#72) A conversation about what music means to us, and monkeys, with Dr. Charles (Chuck) Snowdon
(#23) Conversations about Communication from the 74th Annual Congres
What happens when a primatologist and podcaster leaves behind an academic career in Japan to embrace a new chapter in wildlife conservation in Canada?
Crickets on the show, for one...
Join me as I share my emotional decision to move on from Kyoto University and take up the role of Senior Scientist, Wildlife Conservation at the Wilder Institute / Calgary Zoo. The challenges of uprooting my family, the bittersweet farewells to a cherished community, and the thrill of new beginnings all mixed up in this candid narrative.
The episode is one part explanation for a year-long absence from podcasting, one part call-to-action as I wrestle with where to go with the podcast from here.
We're now 9 episodes away from 100. My promise to you is that we'll get there, possibly sooner than you think. But beyond that?
That's where I need your help. Here's what you can do:
Send in ratings and reviews! Wherever you listen to the show. Apple Podcasts. Spotify. Platform X. Whatever. These will help grow the podcast and tell me how I'm doing, and whether you get value out of the show.
Reach out through social media, through the podcast website, or via theprimatecast@gmail.com. See below for details on how to reach me.
Donate! Make a small one-time donation, or become a monthly subscriber for a small fee. Shout outs and deep appreciation to anyone who supports the show. Your support will directly influence whether we carry on beyond the 100 episode benchmark.
This episode is not just a story of change, but a rallying call to join me on this new path where our shared passions for wildlife and science communication can drive the PrimateCast community onward.
Nico was on the podcast once before, in episode 30 when we recorded from the International Primatological Society's conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, back in 2014.
So let's call this a 10-year reunion!
In the episode, we talk about:
bloodletting (Paywall), I know, right? Nico thought it was a weird question, too!
the most tech-savvy baboons in the world, who also boast some of the highest screen times around
but also, why they are good subjects to study social cognition with
the relationship between biological and cultural evolution
and the role of mentors in shaping one's career
curiosity, in humans and beyond ...
-----
“You need social learning and you need technological reasoning to get technological evolution. The question is, what evolved first and what is the most important." (Nicolas Claidiere) -----
I found this to be a remarkable conversation about the evolution of technological reasoning, social learning and cultural evolution. It offers a reflection on the broader implications of social dynamics and cognitive science, and really highlights what incredible insights can come from one of the most innovative research labs you're likely to find out there.
I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did! And learn a lot from it, too...
Explore zoo animal welfare with Dr. Lance J. Miller, a leading authority in animal welfare science at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, formerly Chicago Zoological Society's Brookfield Zoo.
Lance is Vice President of Animal Welfare Science at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, but he also holds a slough of other appointments.
Lance is also internationally active in the field, currently serving as the Vice-Chair for the World Association of Zoos and Aquarium's (WAZA) Ethics and Animal Welfare Committee, and as Chair of the WAZA Ethics Subcommittee.
the cetacean welfare study - the largest multi-institutional study of cetacean welfare in existence
behavioral diversity, behavioral stereotypies, and other indicators of indicator of animal welfare
how technology like Zoo PhysioTrack and ZooMonitor are reshaping the landscape of animal welfare monitoring
the ethics of animals in zoos and the perceptions of visitors in relation to conservation and welfare
This episode will enrich your understanding of a complex, interdisciplinary field that blends science and ethics and showcases in the best case human compassion and commitment to the animals we keep at zoos and aquariums.
In this episode of The PrimateCast, your host sits down with science communicator Amanda Mathieson, Head of Public Engagement, Education and Communications at Biorbic, Ireland's National Bioeconomy Research Centre.
She's also a pioneer in the space of developing STEM-themed escape rooms. And that was the main topic of discussion in the interview.
Throughout the episode, Amanda offers insightful anecdotes and creative ideas that reveal the potential of escape rooms as educational tools. We uncover the nuances of designing these immersive settings, from overcoming teamwork challenges to incorporating actors to enhance the experience.
About STEM-themed escape rooms, Amanda notes in the interview that, "It really levels the playing field… Gives people a chance to excel at something that is science based but they might think, ‘oh wow, I did that, I beat that, even though I don’t think of myself as a sciency person'."
In an article she coauthored in the journal Research for All, Amanda writes that, "In an engagement scenario, perceived learning may be more valuable than actual learning, as this relates to self-efficacy and the likelihood of continued engagement.”
Amanda paints a vivid picture of how these innovative approaches can promote a love for science and encourage critical thinking, making learning an enjoyable adventure for all ages.
During the pandemic, Amanda also started her own podcast, conversing with science communicators in different fields and exploring how people can get into such roles. We touched on Amanda's own career path in the interview, but to learn more about the field and some of the people in it, check out that limited series podcast here.
In addition to her role at Biorbic, Amanda is also Coordinator of the STEAM Summer School, which provides practical training in communicating science through the arts.
And, she is currently working toward her doctorate at University College Dublin’s Earth Institute, where she studies “play”. We end the interview with a discussion of learning through video games like Age of Empires, and board games like Pandemic and Daybreak.
As Amanda notes in closing, we all need to play more! And if we can do a little learning at the same time? Well, all the better.
Today's episode is all about royalty. No, not those odd primates shuffling around palaces in crowns and robes, but the monarchs of the butterfly world.
We're joined by Dr. Jaap de Roode, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, who's one of the world's experts in insect self-medication.
Yup, you heard that right.
You might have caught one of our episodes (42, 60) with Mike Huffman, who discovered chimpanzees self-medicating in Tanzania to ward off parasites. Well, if you thought that was amazing (it is!), wait'll you hear Jaap talk about monarch butterflies!
After sharing his background in parasitology and population ecology, Jaap describes his work on medicative behaviors in monarch butterflies. From there, we go on to a whole bunch of other topics, like:
how parasites affect monarch health, especially during their migrations
the incredible diversity of animal medicative behaviors
The role of citizen science in monarch conservation
The importance of science communication in raising awareness
When we recorded the interview in spring 2023, Jaap was actually in Japan visiting Mike Huffman to talk about this book, so Mike joined us for the interview.
For anyone whose interested, I noticed that Jaap started a podcast of his own out of Emory University called Virulent Vortex. Check that out if you're interested in "infectious diseases across scales from molecules and pathogens to populations and pandemics, and everything in between" (from their website).
As always, I thoroughly enjoyed having this conversation, and learned a lot from Jaap about butterflies and beyond.
Disclaimer: The PrimateCast in no way, shape or form supports self-medicating with cigarette butts like those inventive urban birds in Mexico!
On September 24, 2016, a few dozen people gathered under a tent at Ueno Park in Tokyo for The Global March for Elephants and Rhinos – an event that took place in more than 130 cities around the world to raise awareness about poaching and the ivory/rhino horn trade.
The march was organized on the first day of the CoP17 meetings in Johannesburg, where country leaders decided on regulations regarding the ivory trade and the protection level to be attributed to all elephant species.
Conservation Voices could not miss such an event happening in Japan, so we jumped on a Shinkansen for Tokyo to meet the organizers and ask them to share their thoughts on the ivory issue for the podcast.
Mrs. Yamawaki grew up and lived in South Africa for more than twenty years. As such, she says she has always been fascinated by wildlife. Working for the documentary film industry, she has also spent extensive time in Kenya, where – along with Asuka Takita, a wildlife veterinarian, they founded Tears of the African Elephant, an NGO based in Japan and Kenya to raise awareness about poaching and ivory consumption.
We'd like to sincerely thank Airi Yamawaki for making time to talk to us at the Global March in Tokyo, and we look forward to having her talk about the ivory issue at future Conserv’Session screenings at Kyoto University.
Conservation Voices correspondent Cecile Sarabian attended the screening of “Blood Lions”, a film portraying the lucrative and legal business of canned lion hunting in South Africa. The screening was followed by a discussion with Dr. Andrew Venter – Executive producer and CEO of Wildlands Conservation Trust.
Bloody business
“Every single day in South Africa, at least two to three captive-bred or tame lions are being killed in canned hunts. And hundreds more are slaughtered annually for the lion bone trade. The Blood Lions story is a compelling call to action to have these practices stopped.”
South Africa is one of the only places in the world that breeds lions commercially for hunting.
The legality of canned lion hunting
At the September 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress, the world’s top scientists, government representatives, non-profit organizations, and experts including Andrew Venter adopted motion 009 on Terminating the hunting of captive-bred lions (Panthera leo) and other predators and captive breeding for commercial, non-conservation purposes.
A good start, which unfortunately was not followed up in Johannesburg at the CITES CoP17 meeting late September, as the 182 countries present did not reach consensus on banning all international trade in African lions, from trophy heads to bones.
Although the majority of participants agreed on banning the trade in bones, teeth and claws from wild lions, the Department of Environmental Affairs of South Africa recently decided to export 800 captive-bred lion skeletons annually to feed southeast Asian traditional medicine.
In this interview with Dr. Andrew Venter, we come back to the issues and challenges depicted in the film about canned hunting and wildlife conservation in South Africa.
Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast is Dr. Anna Nekaris, the world's foremost authority on one of the world's least known primates: the slow loris, or as she likes to call it, the Little Fireface.
"A venomous primate, that's ridiculous"
In the interview, Dr. Nekaris talks about how she seeks to understand why a primate has evolved venom, placing it in small company to which only a handful of other mammals belong. She also discusses why we need to be concerned about the illegal pet trade and slow loris conservation, and how telling people about their venomous ways might help.
We conclude the interview talking about her conservation and outreach program, The Little Fireface Project, and how they are both battling and exploiting social media to combat the pet trade that is threatening this group of primates across their range.
Anna Nekaris is Professor of Anthropology and Course leader for the acclaimed MSc in Primate Conservation at Oxford Brookes University. She also happens to be co-Editor-in-Chief of the journalFolia Primatologica, the official journal of the European Federation for Primatology.
Photo Credit: Anna Nekaris / The Little Fireface Project
Have you ever wondered whether tortoises yawn contagiously? Or what reptile memory might be like? Or even what impact reptile cognition may have on ecosystem processes?
No?
Well, Dr. Anna Wilkinson has, and she shares her thoughts with us on this episode of The PrimateCast.
A-MAZE-ing Moses…
In the interview, Dr. Wilkinson talks about how her interest in studying reptile cognition arose, how Alexandra the red-footed tortoise failed to spread yawns contagiously, and how tortoise cognitive abilities can still amaze under the right experimental conditions.
In the second part of the interview, she also discusses the implications of her work for improving reptile welfare and conservation.
Anna Wilkinson is Associate Professor of Animal Cognition and leader of the cold-blooded cognition laboratory at the University of Lincoln. She has also been awarded an Ig Nobel prize in 2011 for her work on (no) contagious yawning in the Red-footed tortoise.
Photo Credit: Anna Wilkinson / Moses / University of Lincoln
Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast and Conservation Voices is Dr. Anne Laudisoit, senior scientist at EcoHealth Alliance in New York City, who visited us at the Primate Research Institute last month between two field trips in eastern DRCongo.
Plague, monkeypox and more
In the podcast, Dr. Laudisoit starts by coming back to her disease biology background and how her fascination with zoonotic diseases started… trapping rats in Kinshasa as a master’s student!
She then goes into more detail about the One Health approach through some zoonotic diseases she has been studying from a fieldwork point of view, such as plague in Tanzania, monkeypox in DRC, as well as their intermediate, accidental (-often us) and ultimate hosts!
From field experience to field experience, we can hear Anne’s passion for her work, the biodiversity she encounters, and the projects of which she is a part, such as EcoHealth Alliance’s PREDICT project, which aims to predict future viral epidemics globally.
A newly discovered population of chimpanzees
In the second part of the interview, Anne shares the other side of her fieldwork: Primatology!
In 2015, while sampling for pathogens and meeting with locals in the Blue Mountains Region, in the northeast of the DRCongo, Anne and colleagues find a chimpanzee community living along this high-altitude fragmented landscape.
Two years later, she comes back with a team of Congolese researchers from the University of Kisangani (UNIKIS) and the Biodiversity Monitoring Center (CSB), as well as a photojournalist friend, Caroline Thirion, to explore the region and make a film called MBUDHA about their expedition and the incredible biodiversity they encounter… including chimpanzees that live near a stream called Mbudha ("water of chimpanzees" in the Kibale language).
Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast is Dr. Cécile Sarabian, co-host of this very podcast and producer of Conservation Voices for The PrimateCast. I interviewed Cécile just before she departed Japan to begin the next stage of her life and career...
Cécile spent the better part of 9 years with us here in Inuyama City at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, so there is also a good deal of tripping down memory lane in the podcast. But we do try to stay focused and talk about some cool science as well.
It's a dirty job...
Cécile has made a bit of a name for herself internationally as a pioneering researcher focusing on evolutionary origins of hygiene and disgust in the animal kingdom, especially in primates.
We talk about this research, including some of her experimental results - discoveries made after presenting study subjects with some intrigiung foraging decisions involving contaminants like feces and rotten foods! - that have garnered a fair amount of appeal in the popular media. You can see a couple of those popular articles here and here.
In the podcast, we also talk about Cécile's own development and the importance of mentors therein. We spend some time talking about someone very important to Cécile, the late Dr. Val Curtis who worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose influential book Don’t Look, don’t touch: the science behind revulsion was instrumental in the development of Cécile's research and whose activism in human hygiene inspired Cécile to think about how she could apply her research as a force of good the world.
For anyone interested in more info about Dr. Val Curtis, check out her Wikipedia page and I highly recommend her inaugural lecture at the LSHTM, which was recorded in the months leading up to her death in September 2020.
She was a brilliant scientist and inspirational human, and will definitely be missed.
I'm sure we've not seen the last of Dr. Cécile Sarabian on The Primatecast, but join us for her fairwell-for-now podcast, and browse among loads of other audio content from primatologists and conservationists from around the world.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Charlie Nunn
As a practicing primate infectious disease ecologist myself, it was really great for me to get the chance to chat with Dr. Charlie Nunn, who has been asking really big questions in this field over the past decade and a half or so.
Dr. Nunn was at IPS presenting his work in a symposium on the evolution of sleep.
In the interview, Dr. Nunn walks us through his background and how he became interested in the comparative evolution of primate infectious disease. We talk about the Global Mammal Parasite Database - an online repository for published information about parasites infecting mammalian hosts - and how that marvellous idea came about, and how much work it must require to maintain!
We also discuss his more recent work about the evolution of sleep, and why humans might not sleep as much as would be expected for a primate on our branch of the evolutionary tree.
Visit the Nunn lab to find out more about his research into the evolutionary ecology of why we get sick.
We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Charlie Nunn for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018.
Photo Credit: Chris Martin / Andrew MacIntosh / Charlie Nunn
This is podcast #63 with Drs. Chia Tan and Fred Bercovitch - and was recorded in March 2015.
The setting for this interview was one of the symposiums for our Primatology and Wildlife Science graduate program at Kyoto University, where students and wildlife professionals gathered to share their research and efforts towards conservation, environmental stewardship and advocacy.
At the time, Chia Tan was working in San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research (now the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance), and so I took the opportunity to talk with her, among other things, about the role of zoos in conservation.
As will become obvious to you during the interview, Chia is absolutely passionate about people and nature. Though trained as a scientific researcher, she’s been a driver of numerous conservation initiatives that have a strong human element to them. We talk about two in this interview - TIPS, or the training in primatology series, which helps motivated young conservationists and researchers from primate range countries attend international training programs and conferences, and Little Green Guards, which aims to foster nature appreciation in children through education, reflection and action, with the hope to inspire and prepare the next generation of Earth’s guardians.
Chia remains the VP and Global Program Director for Little Green Guards, but she’s also VP and Treasurer for Ludi International, a US non-profit dedicated to preserving biological diversity on Earth by inspiring and empowering people through scientific research, education and capacity building. She’s also adjunct professor of Anthropology at San Diego State University and the School of Agroforestry Engineering and Planning at Tongren University (Guizhou, China), and she sits on the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. And I’m probably missing a few things here as well!
Now, in the interview, you’ll also hear from Dr. Fred Bercovitch, who previously worked at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Behavioral Biology Division before becoming professor at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute until his retirement in 2017. If you want to learn more about Fred, you can go way back in time and listen to The PrimateCast #2, which was published on April 12th, 2012!
Fred had invited Chia to the symposium, as their time at San Diego Zoo overlapped and he thought she’d be an excellent role model for our own graduate students in the program.
And so, kind of coming full circle to zoos before we jump into the interview, when Fred was here at Kyoto University, h
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Chris Whittier
I was really excited to be able to chat with Dr. Chris Whittier at last year's IPS in Chicago. Chris and I met a few years earlier while bunking together at a symposium held by some colleagues in the Czech Republic, so it was good to sit down and catch up!
Chris was at IPS presenting his work on applied wildlife veterinary medicine in a symposium titled "Advances in health research at the interface of humans and nonhuman primates", chaired by Dr. Dominic Travis.
In the interview, we discuss his experience working literally to save the lives of African great apes through Gorilla Doctors, previously the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.
We get into the sticky issues of wildlife health interventions, sometimes lumped into the category of 'extreme conservation', and discuss the importance of health surveillance and, if necessary, intervention in wildlife conservation.
Visit his academic page here for more information on his expanding activities in wildlife health and conservation.
We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Chris Whittier for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018.
In this edition of The PrimateCast, we welcome Drs. Ikuma Adachi, Fred Bercovitch, and David Hill to the studio to discuss the CICASP program from top to bottom.
In addition to discussing the program itself, we tackle issues surrounding adjusting to life in Japan and conducting research both at PRI and abroad at the many field sites run by researchers at the PRI.
Our guests also discuss how they came to be affiliated with CICASP, from their own academic origins in graduate school through to the research that they carry out today at PRI and abroad.
In this installment of The PrimateCast, Andrew and Chris are joined by Dr. Cyril Grueter of the University of Western Australia.
In February and March of 2012, Dr. Cyril Grueter visited PRI to meet with colleagues to discuss the various projects in which he is involved, including the ecology of temperate primates and the evolution of multi-level societies.
We took the opportunity to bring him to the studio to discuss his research, from his PhD work on the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey through his postdoctoral work on mountain gorillas in the Virungas.
A major focus of the interview is on the evolution of multi-level societies in nonhuman primates, and what that might mean for our understanding of human social systems evolution as well.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Fabian Leendertz
As a practicing primate infectious disease ecologist myself, it was really great for me to get the chance to chat with Dr. Fabian Leendertz, who heads up the Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms Project Group at the Robert Koch Institut in Berlin.
Dr. Leendertz was at IPS presenting his work on great ape respiratory diseases in a symposium titled "Advances in health research at the interface of humans and nonhuman primates", chaired by Dr. Dominic Travis.
Dr. Leendertz has been involved in some pretty high profile work examining the emergence and persistence of pathogens such as Ebola and Anthrax in wildlife, and what these and other infectious diseases mean for great ape health, population viability and conservation.
In the interview, we discuss some of this work, what it's like going in to an Ebola zone shortly after the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, what kills great apes in the forest, and what we know and still need to know about primate disease. Visit his research group here for more information on their activities.
We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Fabian Leendertz for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018.
Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast is Dr. Valeria Romano, who shares with us a series of interviews she conducted with conservation scientists during a meeting on the “Strategic Planning for the Conservation of Golden Lion Tamarins” run by the Save the Golden Lion Tamarin Association in 2018.
Have a beer on the golden lion tamarin
In the podcast, Dr. Romano introduces us to golden lion tamarins and why they are in special need of our attention as endangered species.
We weave between discussions in the studio and interviews done in Brazil with five conservation scientists, including Dr. Luis Paulo Ferraz, Dr. Carlos Ruiz-Miranda, Dr. Jenniffer Mickelberg, Dr. Marcos Freire, and Dr. James Dietz. Each brings a unique perspective and a unique contribution to the conservation of this endangered species.
You can also hear about various ways in which you can support their conservation (e.g. beers for conservation!).
We'd like to thank all of our guests, who generously shared their tme and expertise with us for this program.
The PrimateCast continues to roll on into the summer as Chris and Andrew chat in this installment with Dr. Heidi Lyn of the University of Southern Mississipi.
Topics covered include:
the language capabilities of cetaceans and primates
the logistics of experimentation with diverse groups of animals
Heidi Lyn's plans for groundbreaking future research in comparative cognition
In this installment of The PrimateCast we continue with our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
"Expect Problems; you won't be disappointed"
- Vernon Reynolds
In the second podcast in this lecture series we hear from Dr. Vernon Reynolds, in a talk entitled "Budongo: The Making of a Field Station". In the lecture, Vernon gives us the story behind many decades of chimpanzee research in Uganda, leading to the Budongo Forest Project and later the Budongo Conservation Field Station.
You can find out more about the talk and about Vernon on our dedicated page for this event, complete with a biosketch with his academic history. And make sure you check out his very own Wikipedia page!
This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program, but we decided to release the audio right here on The PrimateCast.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to CICASP's YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
For the 6th international primatology lecture we invited Dr. Karen Strier to share her story with us.
Many of our listeners should be really familiar with Dr. Strier, as she was until recently president of the International Primatological Society and is the author of 6 editions of the famous textbook Primate Behavioral Ecology - which I assume many of you, like me many years ago, were trained on!
I was lucky enough to interview her for the podcast back in 2016 (#53) at the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society that was held in Chicago and hosted by Lincoln Park Zoo. She had just become president of the IPS, so now I guess we can bookend her tenure with a follow up episode of The PrimateCast - nailed it!
But I thought we had a really great conversation back then, so it was nice to see the bigger picture of Karen’s work in this IPLS event. And, if you stay to the end, you’ll notice that I left in my own question of Dr. Strier, just because I thought her answer to it really helped fill out the story of why their work on muriquis matters so much, and what we still need to look out for.
In her talk, Karen covers how she got into primatology and ended up studying muriquis, also known as woolly monkeys - those rare faces in the forest, which she writes about so elegantly in a book of that name. Northern muriquis, her main study species, are among the most endangered primates, and the work that Karen and her colleagues have been doing is really shedding light on their ups and downs, and the threats they continue to face.
Karen Strier is Vilas Research Professor and Irven Devore Professor of Anthropology at the University of Madison - Wisconsin. For anyone who wants to know more about Dr. Strier, check out
In this installment of The PrimateCast we continue with our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
"Dreams are not destinations, they're journeys. So, dare to dream"
- Zimbo
In the third podcast in this lecture series, we hear from Dr. Ramesh Boonratana, Zimbo, talking about why he's not a primatologist and - according to him! - other incoherent ramblings.
Zimbo details his journey into and then out of primatology, with a couple of important messages for teh audience. It's clear from the lecture that Zimbo values education, doing things the right way, and offering a roadmap for young students wishing to get into the field. I think that's what makes him so popular in the world of Southeast Asian primatology, where he's actively involved in various educational and conservation-oriented activities.
Zimbo is an associate professor of conservation biology at Mahidol University in Thailand, and has many advisory roles for organizations as diverse as the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Primate Specialist Group, the Bukit Merah Orang Utan Foundation, and the Creation Justice Commission of Kota Kinabalu rchdiocese. He talks about some of these roles and how he's involved in bringing people together for conservation in this lecture.
You can find out more about the talk and about Zimbo on our dedicated page for this event, complete with a biosketch with his academic history.
In this introductory podcast, we showcase a smattering of the many voices that could be heeard at IPS/ASP 2016 in Chicago. Cecile Sarabian and Andrew MacIntosh took their mobile recording devices around the exhibition hall at Navy Pier to hear from delegate after delegate about... well, about not that much really but we're certain that you'll all enjoy listening to it anyway!
And, you'll get our perspectives on the conference and these little short interview clips throughout.
We close the episode with an interview with organizers Dr. Steve Ross and Dr. Lydia Hopper, who give us their impressions on the conference and all the hard work that led up to it, including how they plan to cool down from all the madness!
Stay tuned for the many upcoming podcasts featuring scientists that attended the conference, including Laura Marsh, Karen Strier, Charlie Nunn, Fabian Leendertz, Chris Whittier and Lilian Pintea.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society. We look forward to Nairobi 2018. Be sure to check out our other podcasts featuring interviews with leading scientists in primatology and beyond.
Aloha! From September 1-10 2016, the IUCN World Conservation Congress – the world’s largest conservation event – was held at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu.
The PrimateCast switched its IPS/ASP T-shirt with a Hawaiian shirt and lei to ride the waves of this huge conservationist gathering.
What’s happening at the IUCN WCC 2016?
In this introductory podcast, we showcase some of the big motions and decisions that took place at the IUCN WCC 2016, in addition to the many voices that were present at the congress. With more than 10,000 participants from 192 countries, we could not record them all, but we still obtained a mix voices loud and clear representing 5 continents!
Each participant we interviewed was asked 5 short questions:
what is your favorite place on planet Earth?
What is your favorite species/organism?
Who is your favorite conservationist?
What is the most urgent place/species to conserve/preserve?
What was the best part of the IUCN World Conservation Congress?
Along with responses from our delegates, Andrew MacIntosh and Cecile Sarabian try to answer these questions as well. Can you?
In the upcoming podcasts featuring conservationists that attended the conference, you will be able to hear from Sylvia Earle, Andrew Venter, Jo Ruxton & David Jones, as well as Abnous Sadeghi & Amir-Hossein Khaleghi, so stay tuned!
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2016. We look forward to the 2020 congress – location still unknown… Be sure to check out our other podcasts featuring interviews with leading scientists and conservationists in primatology and beyond.
We interview Dr. Jane Goodall, world renowned naturalist, conservationist, activist, humanist and much, much more.
In the interview, we hear a funny story about her run-ins with Japanese primatologists in Africa, but the bulk of the interview is about her journey with chimpanzees and turning into an activist, with words of wisdom and encouragement for budding conservationists and naturalists.
Tune in and learn about Dr. Goodall's visit to Japan, her historical ties to Japanese primatology, and her projects with the Jane Goodall Institute and Roots & Shoots.
We chatted with Dr. Call about the extensive work on comparative cognition that he has carried out at Leipzig Zoo, where all four non-human great ape species are represented, as well as his work on other non-primate species such as corvids.
Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast is Dr. Julie Duboscq, researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research based at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, in the department of EcoAnthropology. I interviewed Julie just before she left Japan to join the CNRS after a five years of postdoctoral study here at the Primate Research Insitute.
Note to readers: this podcast interview was recorded in June 2018, but I'm only now getting to releasing it. For shame! It's not for lack of quality, but sometimes things get shuffled down the pack. This is also only the fifth podcast released since that time! Also for shame!
All Hail the Fieldwork Fail...
Julie’s been a fixture in research on the evolution of sociality and social behavior in the macaque genus. She's a long-term member of the Macaca nigra project, with those mischievous selfie-taking crested macaques on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. And studied the Japanese macaque, Macaca fuscata, over a five-year period with me here in Japan.
Julie’s spent a good deal of time thinking about and studying relationships between individuals within groups and all the costs and benefits those relationships entail. We speak about some of those costs in the interview, as they relate to transmission of infectious organisms like lice within macaque social networks. You can see some of that work featured here and here (Paywall).
We also talk about Julie's time on Koshima and the various fieldwork fails that plagued her work there. She showed the the reslience and ingenuity of a true fieldworker during her time there!
Although we don't get into it in the interview, Julie is also a founding member of the MacaqueNet, which is a group and database aiming to facilitate and encourage collaboration between macaque researchers. It's a wonderful initiative that I'm happy to be a part of, and I look forward to the various novel projects and results that arise from such a large-scale collaboration. Julie talks about oen science toward the end of the podcast, and MacqueNet is a perfect example of the kind of collaborative atmosphere she envisions for science and the scientists that populate it.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Karen Strier
In this edition, we sat down with Dr. Karen Strier, Vilas Research Professor and Irven Devore Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During the conference, Dr. Strier took the reigns as incoming president of the International Primatological Society from outgoing president and Kyoto University distinguished professor Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa. We talked briefly about this, but spent the bulk of the interview discussing her long term research with muriquis in Brazil and how her work as well as the field of primatology, which she herself has helped mould through education and outreach, have developed over the last few decades.
As author of numerous primatological works, including the hugely influential series Primate Behavioral Ecology, now in its 5th print edition, Dr. strier has been a leader in the field and an inspiration to generations now of primatologists. Her energy and devotion to research, education and conservation are evident throughout the interview. Get ready to be inspired, as we look forward to good things to come during Dr. Strier's tenure as IPS president over the next 4 years.
We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Karen Strier for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018. Be sure to check out our other podcasts featuring interviews with leading scientists in primatology and beyond.
Join us and all our friends at IPS/ASP on The PrimateCast, and visit our official webpage @ theprimatecast.com to find loads of content from primatologists and conservationists around the world. You can also visit (and Like/Follow) us on Facebook and Twitter and leave comments and feedback on this or any other podcast in the series. You can also follow our
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Laura Marsh
Just as we were about to close up shop, take down our Kyoto University booth and pack away our mobile podcasting unit, we were approached by Laura Marsh wondering what we were doing.
After she explained to us what she was doing, we had to immediately scrap our plans for a quick and dirty exit and sit down one last time for a fascinating chat with another personality in the primatology world. What comes out is a tale of mystery and intrigue of epic proportions - uncharted Amazonian rainforest, a missing monkey, and ... a houseboat!?
Dr. Laura Marsh is Director and co-founder of the Global Conservation Institute, and she has dedicated herself to the field of tropical ecology and conservation. In the podcast, she describes her upcoming project, Houseboat Amazon.
Years and years ago, a saki monkey (Pithecia vanzolinii) was lost to science, with no individuals, dead or alive, being spotted since 1932! After discovering the animal in museum collections while revising the taxonomy of saki monkeys, Dr. Marsh decided that what was needed was an expedition of epic proportions, fueled by the desire to discover and preserve some of nature's remotest lifeforms.
Rather than using a more traditional approach, Dr. Marsh decided to bring all of us along for the ride, in a social media extravaganza that puts each of us on the boat in search of the long lost platyrrhine. So follow along with Houseboat Amazon, and be sure to check out their crowdfunder, powered by Indiegogo, at Generosity.com to find out how you can help with the mission.
We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Laura Marsh for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018.
After a temporary hiatus during Chris' expedition to West Africa, The PrimateCast is back and looking forward to a great summer packed with interviews that we've racked up over the past months.
In today's installment, Andrew and Chris speak to Dr. Laurence Anthony, professor in the Center for English Language Education in Science and Engineering (CELESE) at Waseda University, Tokyo.
CICASP invited Dr. Anthony to PRI in February to give a workshop on the use of corpus tools in technical writing skill development, one of his main areas of expertise and current research foci at Waseda.
We talked about his work, and how corpus linguistics has infiltrated the way language is conceptualized in a diverse array of fields from technical writing to artificial intelligence.
In the second installment of our podcast series from the conference on the Evolutionary Origins of the Human Mind at the International Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS), we spoke with Dr. William McGrew, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Primatology in the Division of Biological Anthropology, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
We chatted with Dr. McGrew about his long career studying chimpanzees across Africa, depth versus breadth in scientific inquiry, cultural primatology and primate Archaeology, and the necessity to understand changing primate cultures in the face of increasing human encroachment.
Dr. McGrew is a prominent biological anthropologist who has written numerous influential scientific and popular works about primate behavior, ecology, and culture, including the books "Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications for Human Evolution" and "The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology".
In the fourth installment of our podcast series from the conference on the Evolutionary Origins of the Human Mind at the International Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS), we spoke with Dr. Dora Biro, Royal Society University Research Fellow, and soon to become tenured member of faculty, in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford.
We chatted with Dr. Biro about her exceptional work with cognition, social information use and cultural transmission of knowledge in chimpanzees, in both the laboratory and in the wild, as well as her studies of information flow and collective decision-making in flocks of homing pigeons.
Find out more about Dr. Biro and her work on her profile at the University of Oxford.
We chatted with Dr. Sanz about her work, both in research and in conservation, with chimpanzees of the Goualogo Triangle, Republic of Congo.
Topics of this podcast include the use of technology in field primatology, complex tool traditions, and unique aspects of the culture and conservation status of chimpanzees and other primates in Central Africa.
In this installment of The PrimateCast, Andrew and special guest host Dr. David Hill of CICASP sit down with Dr. Tomoaki Nishihara, Senior Technical Adviser of Operations and Protection with the Wildlife Conservation Society in Congo-Brazzaville. This interview was conducted in April 2012.
We chatted with Dr. Nishihara about his work in the conservation of wildlife in Central Africa, from his efforts to curb the continued demand for forest elephant ivory in Japan, through his experiences during the civil war in the Republic of Congo between 1997 and 1999, to his role in the establishment of a conservation presence in various Central African nations.
In 2012, Dr. Nishihara published a Japanese translation of the book "Hidden Giants: The Forest Elephants of the Congo Basin" (originally by Stephen Blake and published by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2006) to alert the Japanese population of the plight of these endangered animals.
Find out more about Dr. Nishihara's work at the homepage of WCS Congo.
We chatted with Dr. Ross about his work enriching the lives of chimpanzees in the USA through Lincoln Park Zoo's innovative and integrative programs, as well as his center's involvement in the conservation of chimpanzees in Africa.
In this podcast, you'll hear Dr. Ross discuss animal welfare issues surrounding captive chimpanzees in zoos, laboratories, and privately-owned facilities, the influence of popularization and media on public perception of their conservation status, and what he's been doing to elevate standards of care for these endangered animals, our closest living relatives.
From Lincoln Park Zoo's leading efforts to bridge research, conservation and welfare issues into a single working model, through the establishment of Project ChimpCARE, to his role in a recent committee's recommendation to cease use of chimpanzees in NIH-funded biomedical research and improve living conditions for chimpanzees nationwide, you can find it all here on this edition of The PrimateCast.
Find out more about Dr. Ross and his work on his profile at Lincoln Park Zoo.
In November of 2012, we sat down with Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, Senior Research Scientist at the Washington National Primate Research Center and lecturer at the University of Washington.
Dr. Jones-Engel is a primatologist who has worked for the better part of her career at bio-medical research centers in the United States.
In the interview, in addition to speaking about how being based at such centers has benefited her field-based work, Dr. Jones-Engel discusses her research into bi-directional disease transmission between human and non-human primates, the importance of targeting Asia for such research pursuits, and the important role that primatologists can play in the ever-expanding field of emerging infectious diseases.
You can find out more about Dr. Jones-Engel and her efforts to increase awareness about issues that arise from increasing human and non-human primate commensalism at the homepage of Team Monkey.
During October and November 2012, Dr. Takeshi Furuichi held a workshop for African primate researchers and conservationists at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute sponsored financially by the Asia-Africa Platform of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Dr. Nackoney, an expert in Geographical Information Systems (GIS), was invited to give a mini workshop on geospatial mapping and modeling using GIS.
In the interview, Dr. Nackoney explains her long-term work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as it falls along two major lines: habitat suitability modeling for endangered species and conservation-based land use planning to promote responsible practices in natural resource utilization among local human populations.
We discuss topics such as the critical role of GIS in making informed decisions about habitat that should be prioritized for protection to conserve endangered species such as bonobos and forest elephants and the importance of capacity building and participatory mapping as ways to encourage local inhabitants to get on board with important conservation efforts.
In this installment of The PrimateCast, we asked students of Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute to select their favorite moments from the first year and a half plus of the podcast. We then interviewed each student, asking them to tell us about their research interests, how they got into the field of primate research and why they made their respective podcast selections.
Student choices could be broadly broken down into conservation- and research-related interview segments, so we are presenting these episodes in a two-part series focusing on these concepts.
In Part I, we focus on conservation-related issues surrounding wild primates.
In addition to learning a little bit about our students, you'll hear clips from past interviews with Jane Goodall, Steve Ross, Tomoaki Nishihara and Janet Nackoney, discussing issues such as the need for young researchers to engage in conservation initiatives, public perceptions of wild chimpanzee conservation status, dealing with civil unrest and war in source countries and the importance of capacity building and involving local communities in conservation and research activities.
List of Interview Selections (audio clips)
Chris and Andrew select Dr. Jane Goodall
Lucie Rigaill selects Dr. Tomoaki Nishihara
Hikaru Wakamori selects Dr. Steve Ross
Sayuri Takeshita selects Dr. Janet Nackoney
Saeko Terada selects Dr. Janet Nackoney
Chris and Andrew wrap up the podcast with more from Dr. Jane Goodall.
You can hear the full interviews with our selected guests on The PrimateCast.
This podcast was produced by Andrew MacIntosh and Chris Martin, with technical support from Heungjin Ryu.
In this installment of The PrimateCast, we asked students of Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute to select their favorite moments from the first year and a half plus of the podcast. We then interviewed each student, asking them to tell us about their research interests, how they got into the field of primate research and why they made their respective podcast selections.
Student choices could be broadly broken down into conservation- and research-related interview segments, so we are presenting these episodes in a two-part series focusing on these concepts.
In Part II, we focus on research in primatological science.
In addition to learning a little bit about our students, you'll hear clips from past interviews with Frans de Waal, Bill McGrew, Josep Call,Dora Biro and Tetsuro Matsuzawa, discussing issues such as the comparative approach in science, defining scientific terms and then developing and testing hypotheses, building a successful research program with clear goals and objectives and even how to get started in science and putting yourself out there as a young researcher.
List of Interview Selections (audio clips)
Chris and Andrew start off the show with Dr. Frans de Waal
Lira Yu selects Dr. Josep Call
Yena Kim and Sojung Han select Dr. Bill McGrew
Renata Mendonca selects Dr. Dora Biro
Heungjin Ryu selects Dr. Dora Biro
Chris and Andrew wrap up the podcast with Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa.
You can hear the full interviews with our selected guests on The PrimateCast.
This podcast was produced by Andrew MacIntosh and Chris Martin, with technical support from Heungjin Ryu.
Hello everyone and welcome back to The PrimateCast! We're back at it with another interview installment to kick off, in rather tardy fashion, 2014...
To get things back on track, we've enlisted the help of CICASP graduate student Sofi Bernstein (see the announcement here), who's taken on a summer internship with us following the departure of Chris Martin, who has now left Japan to assume a position in the United States (more on that in an upcoming podcast).
To kick things off in summer 2014, we've gone back to the archives and dug up a few older interviews we managed to conduct in recent years. But don't worry, a few updates follow the interviews as well so we don't get left behind.
In the current podcast, we present an interview conducted in March 2012 with Dr. Miho Inoue-Murayama, Professor at the Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University.
Dr. Inoue-Murayama specializes in behavioral genetics, and has an extensive list of ongoing collaborative projects focused on understanding genetic diversity in nature and determining genetic markers for various behavioral phenotypes, including among other things personality.
In this interview, she talks about a few of these projects, but we also got to hear from a pair of her international students at the time, now Dr. Sharif Ramadan of Egypt and Dr. Christopher Adenyo of Ghana. Their stories serve to illustrate how Dr. Inoue-Murayama's work not only offers ways forward in academic circles but also contains a strong applied component aimed at improving development efforts around the world.
You can find out more about Dr. Inoue-Murayama and her work, such as the DNA Zoo, on her academic profile.
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
06 Aug 2014
Conversations about mental time travel, metacognition and metaphorical mapping from the 74th Annual Congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the annual meetings of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology between July 19-21, 2014. The society's aims are to support a better understanding of human nature, particularly in the realm of cognition, through the lens of the animal mind; in other words, its members study the cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals to give clues about the evolution of our own considerable mental abilities.
This year's congress was held in Inuyama, hometown of the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute (KUPRI), and notably was conducted for the first time entirely in English. The president of the organizing committee this year was Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa of KUPRI, and there were an impressive number of speakers from around the world invited to participate and present at this event. As such, Andrew along with summer intern Sofi Bernstein decided to get on over there and talk with as many of these invitees as possible.
In this the first of five installments we hear from five presenters who spoke at the conference about topics ranging from "mental time travel" and "metacognition" to the idea of "metaphorical mapping". Speakers in this episode include Dr. Michael Beran, Ms. Emily Brown, Dr. Rob Hampton, Dr. Ikuma Adachi and Dr. Victoria Templer. For more information about these researchers and their work, please click on their institution names in the list below to follow links to their respective academic pages.
List of Interviews in part 1
Click one of the researcher names below to skip directly to that segment of the podcast.
Introduction to the episode with Andrew and Sofi
Dr. Michael Beran (mental time travel), Georgia State University
Ms. Emily Brown (metacognition), Emory University
Dr. Rob Hampton (metacognition), Emory University
Dr. Ikuma Adachi (metaphorical mapping), Kyoto University
Dr. Victoria Templer (metaphorical mapping), Providence College/Emory University
Podcast wrap-up with Andrew and Sofi.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology. Please do check out our other podcasts in this series, and make sure to browse our other podcast interviews with leading scientists in primatology and beyond.
This podcast series was produced with special assistance from summer intern Sofi Bernstein.
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the annual meetings of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology between July 19-21, 2014. The society's aims are to support a better understanding of human nature, particularly in the realm of cognition, through the lens of the animal mind; in other words, its members study the cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals to give clues about the evolution of our own considerable mental abilities.
This year's congress was held in Inuyama, hometown of the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute (KUPRI), and notably was conducted for the first time entirely in English.
The president of the organizing committee this year was Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa of KUPRI, and there were an impressive number of speakers from around the world invited to participate and present at this event.
As such, Andrew along with summer intern Sofi Bernstein decided to get on over there and talk with as many of these invitees as possible.
In this the second of five installments we hear from three presenters who spoke at the conference about topics in the general area of pro-sociality. Speakers in this episode include Dr. Ayaka Takimoto, Dr. Peggy Mason and Dr. James Anderson. For more information about these researchers and their work, please click on their institution names in the list below to follow links to their respective academic pages.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology. Please do check out our other podcasts in this series, and make sure to browse our other podcast interviews with leading scientists in primatology and beyond.
This podcast series was produced by Andrew MacIntosh with special assistance from summer intern Sofi Bernstein.
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the annual meetings of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology between July 19-21, 2014. The society's aims are to support a better understanding of human nature, particularly in the realm of cognition, through the lens of the animal mind; in other words, its members study the cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals to give clues about the evolution of our own considerable mental abilities.
This year's congress was held in Inuyama, hometown of the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute (KUPRI), and notably was conducted for the first time entirely in English.
The president of the organizing committee this year was Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa of KUPRI, and there were an impressive number of speakers from around the world invited to participate and present at this event.
As such, Andrew along with summer intern Sofi Bernstein decided to get on over there and talk with as many of these invitees as possible.
In this the third of five installments we hear from three presenters who spoke at the conference about topics generally relating to the field of animal communication. Speakers in this episode include Dr. Fumihiro Kano, Dr. John Iversen and Dr. Klaus Zuberbuhler. For more information about these researchers and their work, please click on their institution names in the list below to follow links to their respective academic pages.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology. Please do check out our other podcasts in this series, and make sure to browse our other podcast interviews with leading scientists in primatology and beyond.
This podcast series was produced by Andrew MacIntosh
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
06 Aug 2014
A conversation about lateralization of the animal brain with Dr. Maciej Trojan from the 74th Annual Congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the annual meetings of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology between July 19-21, 2014. The society's aims are to support a better understanding of human nature, particularly in the realm of cognition, through the lens of the animal mind; in other words, its members study the cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals to give clues about the evolution of our own considerable mental abilities.
This year's congress was held in Inuyama, hometown of the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute (KUPRI), and notably was conducted for the first time entirely in English. The president of the organizing committee this year was Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa of KUPRI, and there were an impressive number of speakers from around the world invited to participate and present at this event. As such, Andrew along with summer intern Sofi Bernstein decided to get on over there and talk with as many of these invitees as possible.
In this the fourth of five installments we hear from Dr. Maciej Trojan speak about his work in lateralization of the animal brain. Topics of discussion include sensory and motor lateralization, possible evolutionary and ecological hypotheses for why brain lateralization exists and a bit about the context of his own work within Polish science.
Dr. Trojan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Behavior, Faculty of Psychology at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Click here to visit his academic page.
We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Maciej Trojan as well as all of our other guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the annual meetings of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology between July 19-21, 2014. The society's aims are to support a better understanding of human nature, particularly in the realm of cognition, through the lens of the animal mind; in other words, its members study the cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals to give clues about the evolution of our own considerable mental abilities.
This year's congress was held in Inuyama, hometown of the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute (KUPRI), and notably was conducted for the first time entirely in English. The president of the organizing committee this year was Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa of KUPRI, and there were an impressive number of speakers from around the world invited to participate and present at this event. As such, Andrew along with summer intern Sofi Bernstein decided to get on over there and talk with as many of these invitees as possible.
In this the fifth and final of five installments we hear Dr. Raman Sukumar speak about his work in the conservation and ecology of Asian elephants in India and around the world.
Topics of discussion include the major issues surrounding elephant conservation, such as human-elephant conflict, and what solutions are being developed to mitigate these issues and protect the future of the Asian elephant.
Dr. Sukumar brings his vast knowledge and experience regarding elephants and tropical forest ecology into this interview, eloquently detailing the current and future problems facing Asian elephants, including the potential impacts of continued climate change dynamics.
Dr. Sukumar is Professor in theCentre for Ecological Sciences of the Indian Institute of Science. Click here to visit his academic page.
We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Raman Sukumar as well as all of our other guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 74th annual congress of the Japan Society for Animal Psychology.
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
28 Aug 2014
Conversations with the Organizing Team at the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Hanoi, Vietnam (Introduction: Bert Covert, Steve Schapiro)
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the meetings of the International Primatological Society held between August 11-16, 2014. The theme of this year's congress, which was held at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, was 'meeting the challenges of conserving primate diversity'.
Unlike the case at the IPS congress two years ago in Cancun, Mexico, The PrimateCast was no longer green, having had a couple of years of run-time to hone its operators' skills. The main result of this new-found savvy is a burst of podcast activity reflecting our coverage of the conference.
Having lost our summer intern, Sofi Bernstein, to field work, we enlisted the efforts of four volunteer graduate students from KUPRI:
Yena Kim
Lucie Rigaill
Sayuri Takeshita
Cecile Sarabian
Together, we were able to interview no fewer than 20 (!) scientists and conservationists, and we're going to share those with you over the coming weeks.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2014
In the first installment of this five-part podcast series, we introduce the series as well as three of the four student volunteers who were so instrumental in making this happen.
After speaking with them about their experiences at the conference for the first half of the program, we hear from two of the three main organizers of the conference: Dr. Bert Covert and Dr. Steve Schapiro.
Dr. Covert provides an entertaining account of how this congress came together, while Dr. Shapiro, as Treasurer and VP for membership of IPS, gives us a run down of the business side of things, as well as an anticipatory look into upcoming IPS congresses.
For anyone seeking more information about our guests and their activities, please follow the links below.
List of Interviews in part 1
Dr. Bert Covert [Professor and Chair] Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder
Dr. Steve Shapiro [Associate Professor] MD Anderson Cancer Center, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, University of Texas
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society.
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
04 Sep 2014
Conversations about Health and Conservation from the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Hanoi, Vietnam (Disease and Conservation: Tom Gillespie, Julio-Cesar Bicca-Marques, Joe Bilietzki)
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the meetings of the International Primatological Society held between August 11-16, 2014. The theme of this year's congress, which was held at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, was 'meeting the challenges of conserving primate diversity'.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2014
In the first installment of this five-part podcast series, we introduced some of the graduate students from PRI who helped interview the 20 guests that appear in the series, and then spoke with two of the organizers of IPS 2014, Dr. Bert Covert and Dr. Steve Schapiro. This time around, in the second installment, we discuss why conservationists and welfare advocates need to consider the role of infectious disease in primate population management.
For anyone seeking more information about our guests and their activities, please follow the links below.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society.
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
05 Sep 2014
Conversations about Primate Conservation from the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Hanoi, Vietnam (Conservation: Tatyana Humle, Miles Woodruff, Debbie Cox, Noel Rowe, Augustin Basabose)
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the meetings of the International Primatological Society held between August 11-16, 2014. The theme of this year's congress, which was held at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, was 'meeting the challenges of conserving primate diversity'.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2014
In the third installment of this series, we discuss a number of issues surrounding primate conservation with five dedicated researchers and conservationists.
conservation of Central African great apes with Dr. Augustin Basabose [Lecturer] Centre de Recherche en Science Naturelles (Lwiro, DRC)
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
22 Sep 2014
Conversations about all things primates from the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Hanoi, Vietnam (Agustin Fuentes, Cheryl Knott, Elisabetta Visalberghi, James Higham, Joanna Setchell)
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the meetings of the International Primatological Society held between August 11-16, 2014. The theme of this year's congress, which was held at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, was 'meeting the challenges of conserving primate diversity'.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2014
For anyone seeking more information about our guests and their activities, please follow the links below.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society.
Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments
If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above.
Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!
07 Oct 2014
Conversations about Cognition and Information from the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society in Hanoi, Vietnam (Social behavior and cognition theme: Cedric Sueur, Odile Petit, Nicolas Claidiere, Jorg Massen, Joshua Plotnik)
Join us on The PrimateCast as we cover the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society.
The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again to cover the meetings of the International Primatological Society held between August 11-16, 2014. The theme of this year's congress, which was held at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, was 'meeting the challenges of conserving primate diversity'.
The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2014
For anyone seeking more information about our guests and their activities, please follow the links below.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as on the entire series of podcasts from our coverage of the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society. We look forward to Chicago 2016.
The PrimateCast crossed a new border by rolling out its mobile podcasting unit to cover the meetings of the SCCS held between September 25-28, 2014, at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. This year’s conference was a great success and gathered hundreds of the best conservation researchers of Africa and Asia. So, enjoy!
The PrimateCast was at SCCS Bangalore 2014
SCCS events are designed for young conservation scientists to help them gain experience, learn new ideas and make contacts that will be valuable for their future careers.
At SCCS Bangalore 2014, we chatted with 6 conservationists about their experience and work.
In the cold Winter, The PrimateCast journeyed to warm up in Australia and to cover the second Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) Australia.
SCCS Australia was hosted by the University of Queensland in Brisbane between January 19 and 29, 2015. If you've ever wondered what Conservation Science looks like in Papua New Guinea, Australia, China, or Columbia, read on.
The PrimateCast was at SCCS Australia 2015
These conferences are designed for young conservation scientists to help them gain experience, learn new ideas and make contacts that will be valuable for their future careers.
List of Interviews
Dr. Hugh Possingham [Professor of Mathematics and Ecology], University of Queensland, ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED), National Environmental Research program hub for Environmental Decisions
Ms. Grace Nugi [Research Intern with the Wildlife Conservation Society Papua New Guinea, Miss Papua New Guinea], University of Papua New Guinea
Dr. Erik Meijaard [Conservation Scientist and Consultant], People and Nature Consulting International
Ms. Angela Recalde-Salas [PhD Student], Centre for Marine Science and Technology (CMST), Curtin University
Ms. Kay Critchell [PhD Student], School of Earth and Environmental Science, James Cook University
Mr. Trishant Simlai [Technical project consultant], Foundation for ecological Security (FES)
Mr. Yufang Gao [PhD student], Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University
Mr. Sean Maxwell [PhD student], ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED), University of Queensland
Ms. Natasha Peters [Research Intern], Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB)
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode as well as the SCCS Australia team for their help to get this podcast out!
This podcast series was produced by Cecile Sarabian and Andrew MacIntosh.
Conkouati-douli National Park, Republic of the Congo – Summer 2010.
I was volunteering with HELP Congo, a program rescuing and reintroducing chimpanzees into the wild - “The only sanctuary in Africa that has no fences”.
Repeatedly during my stay, I heard the name of“Naf”(for Naftali). He was apparently a previous camp manager who had contributed a lot to the work of the NGO.
When we wanted to release chimpanzees, go to Naf, when we wanted to monitor wild chimpanzees near the Sanctuary, go to Naf, etc. I asked after him and learned that he left HELP Congo to join a wildlife law enforcement group in the capital, Brazzaville.
Since then, I started to follow updates from the group – PALF (Project for the Application of Law for Fauna).
And finally, no later than few days ago, I had the opportunity via The PrimateCast to talk to Naftali Honig (see an interview with Naftali in National Geographic) and his experience as an activist fighting wildlife trafficking and corruption in the Congo.
We'd like to sincerely thank Naftali Honig for joining us on the podcast and sharing his experiences and insight into conservation enforcement on the ground!
This podcast was was produced by Cecile Sarabian and Andrew MacIntosh.
The third edition of our SCCS coverage from around the world
From March 24-26, 2015, the 16th edition of the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) Cambridge, was hosted by the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge.
Since the very first conference held in 2000, this student-based conference has become a model to be replicated in other parts of the world (see The PrimateCast's coverage of SCCS Bangalore and SCCS Brisbane o the podcast website).
If you are a student and you are interested in conservation, this conference is made for you! The first project that got me involved in Conservation is our environmental education project in Iran: Kavikonj Nature School, for which I went to present a poster at SCCS Cambridge.
A trio of crazy conference days
Intense… was the word! Four Plenary talks, 32 student talks, multiple workshops, and posters hung during lunch and dinners! Although a different style and environment than either Brisbane or Bangalore, SCCS Cambridge definitely lived up to the hype. The conference had a wide range of countries represented; I met 3 students from Iran, which was completely unexpected, and a lot of students from Africa, much less represented in other SCCS conferences due to geography.
What can you get by going to such conferences? SCCS Cambridge strongly encourages students to present their work either through a poster or a talk. However, I met students who were just attending, probably to get an overall idea of what others are doing and to get inspired. SCCS is a great place for networking, learning and recharging your batteries. You come out of such a conference and you want to get right to changing the world! For me personally, it was a useful experience toward raising awareness about our alternative school in Iran, meet other Iranian students and exchange ideas about the project. Additionally, I attended two workshops on raising funds for conservation projects and planning a conservation research programme, and discussed with other students about the role of education in conservation. Now I just have to apply all that I learned…
List of Interviews
Dr. Rosie Trevelyan [Director], Tropical Biodiversity Association, UK/Kenya, University of Cambridge, UK
Dr. Tom McCarthy [Executive director], Panthera Snow Leopard Program, USA
Ms. Allison Stocks [MSc student], UBC Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Canada
Ms. Elham Nourani [PhD Student], Nagasaki University, Japan (Researchgate Profile)
Mr. Jeremy Cusack [PhD Student], Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, UK, Zoological Society of London, UK
Ms. Rhoda Kachali [PhD student], University of Zambia, Zambia Wildlife Authority, Frankfurt Zoological Society, Germany
Ms. Carmen Julia Quiroga [MSc student], Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, UK
An Earth Day special with a visiting high school intern
The PrimateCast had a rare opportunity this week to enlist a 16 year old high school student intern to produce a podcast of her very own. We are now proud to present to you Nina's Passion, a rough guide to finding your passion.
Nina Negi on finding her passion
Nina writes, "I couldn’t believe it when Andrew MacIntosh, Associate Professor of the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute, answered my email. He told me that even though the PRI had never [mm, maybe] taken any high school interns before, he’d be happy to organize an internship for me."
We were more than happy to have Nina with us at PRI, and it seems she made the most of her time there, engaging in all kinds of primate-related activities and producing her very own podcast for The PrimateCast! To read a full summary written by Nina about her experiences at PRI, check out our news story news story. And to see Nina's story written up in the newsletter of her former school, Greenschool Bali, click here.
We'd like to sincerely thank all of our guests on this episode.
This podcast was produced by Andrew MacIntosh with help from Sofi Bernstein and Nina Negi.
After a 2-hour boat trip on Lake Victoria, across the Equator, I arrived at Ngamba Island, a chimpanzee haven in Uganda. Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary currently hosts 48 chimpanzees, all rescued from illegal ownership and/or orphaned by hunting activities in Uganda or neighboring countries.
Lilly Ajarova is the executive director of The Chimpanzee Trust, an NGO working on all aspects of the sanctuary. The first time we met, it was March 2015 for the annual Primatology and Wildlife Science symposium at Kyoto University, where she was one of the invited speakers. The second time was only a few months later in August, just before I embarked for Ngamba. T
Titus Mukungu is the sanctuary manager and veterinarian at Ngamba. He was my host for the 3 days I spent there, showing me the wonderful job every person working on Ngamba was doing. I got to see behind the scenes at a chimpanzee sanctuary.
From early morning chimpanzee pant-hoots through late evening meetings, I could feel the true devotion of the staff to chimpanzee welfare, conservation and education. Besides this, Ngamba Island is also a paradise for bird-, monitor lizard-, and otter-watchers.
So, if you pass by Uganda, don’t miss the chance to visit!
We'd like to sincerely thank Lilly Ajarova for joining us on the podcast and sharing her insight into conservation in Uganda, and Titus Mukungu for hosting us and sharing his experience at Ngamba.
This podcast was produced by Cecile Sarabian and Andrew MacIntosh.
Hello everyone and welcome back to The PrimateCast! Really excited to welcome back to the podcast our very own Dr. Chris Martin.
Chris is currently Research Scientist at Indianapolis Zoo where he runs cognitive tasks on touch panels with orangutans to advance both science and public understanding of animal behavior, cognition and conservation, but he's back in Inuyama temporarily and was ready to get back to the studio.
For anyone who may not know or remember, Chris is one of the founders of The PrimateCast but left the Primate Research Institute in 2014 after 5 years of graduate study and 2 years of postdoctoral work on the Ai Project under the supervision of Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa, and of course 2 years well spent right here with the podcast.
In January 2016, Luc Mathot, wildlife law enforcement activist and director and founder of Conservation Justice, received me at his apartment in Libreville, Gabon for an interview.
Luc’s work on wildlife management started in the Central African rainforests of Gabon, Cameroon and Congo. Then, Luc became the manager of the Lesio-Louna project (“Projet Protection des Gorilles”) and the representative of the Aspinall Foundation in the Congo for 4 years.
Later on, this experience led him to create PALF (Project for the Application of Law for Fauna) in Congo-Brazzaville in 2008, which was the first replication of the wildlife law enforcement NGO: LAGA – The Last Great Ape Organization.
Since 2010, Luc has been leading Conservation Justice, an NGO aiming to protect threatened species in Gabon from illegal hunting, logging and wildlife trade by increasing the level of wildlife law enforcement in the country.
This podcast was produced by Cecile Sarabian and Andrew MacIntosh
Canada Research Chair in Primate Ecology and Conservation, Dr. Colin Chapman, joins us in the studio to talk about 26 years of work in and around Kibale National Park, Uganda.
"People always expect me to have a nice kind of plan ... like I had it all lined up, but the reality is ..."
26 years of directing primate research and conservation activities confers a lot of perspective, to which this interview with Dr. Colin Chapman will attest in spades!
In the interview, we talk about how he got started at Kibale, which has become an iconic field site for primate ecology and conservation, and how he manages to maintain a high scientific output while at the same time pushing forward on numerous conservation and public health fronts.
While discussing the nature of long term field work at Kibale, Dr. Chapman imparts numerous nuggets of wisdom with respect to interfacing research, conservation and wildlife and public health.
Toward the end of the interview, Dr. Chapman reflects on the forest, its restoration, and the expected impact of an increasing elephant population in the area, before getting into his involvement with National Geographic and the opportunities that are available to young researchers through its various programs.
Colin Chapman is Canada Research Chair of Primate Ecology and Conservation, and Professor in McGill University's Department of Anthropology and School of the Environment. He's also currently a Killam Research Fellow, Associate Scientist with WCS and honorary lecturer at Makere University in Uganda.
"Conservation without livelihoods is conversation"
Raymond Lumbuenamo is a conservationist, an economist and an expert in remote sensing, and until recently (2005-2015) he was Director of the World Wildlife Fund DRC. He is currently Professor at the University of Kinshasa's UNESCO School of Integrated Management of Forests and Land, and remains a consultant for WWF DRC.
He was in Japan in early 2016 setting up a joint project with Kyoto University focusing on developing eco-tourism based on observing bonobos in Malebo, which will be run largely by local communities.
With a frank way of speaking and an authoritative perspective, Raymond Lumbuenamo reflects on the issue of conservation in DRC, and on some of the ‘fights’ he has been involved in, for example with the British oil company SOCO digging for oil in the Virungas.
South Korean behavioral ecologist, science educator, biodiversity conservationist and best-selling author Dr. Jae Chun Choe joins us on The PrimateCast to talk about his role in the development of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology in Korea.
Cecile Sarabian of Conservation Voices and Kyoto University Primate Research Institute graduate student Heungjin Ryu, also from South Korea, help introduce the interview
"So I finally had to give up my own life ... to become a so-called 'servant' to all of my students"
Professor Choe, as he is respectfully and yet affectionately known to his numerous students that have passed through Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, is Founding President of Korea's National Institute of Ecology and Professor and Chair in Behavioral Ecology at Ewha Women's University.
After doing his graduate studies at Harvard with evolutionary biology giant E. O. Wilson, Professor Choe eventually returned to Seoul National University where he began to build this field from the ground up in his native Korea.
"[in South Korea] literally nobody was doing anything related to the study of behavior, evolutionary biology or anything like that"
In the interview, which was conducted in early March 2015 at a Kyoto University Leading Graduate Program in Primatology and Wildlife Science annual symposium, Professor Choe briefly runs through his prestigious background before discussing evolutionary biology in South Korea.
Throughout, the sincerity with which he approaches science, his students and the public is abundantly clear, as is the reason behind his portrayal by the Korean media as "the scientist with the mind of a poet"!
He ends the interview discussing his role with the Conference of the Parties Convention on Biological Diversity, the establishment of the National Institute of Ecology (a must see!), and the impact that work done by him and his colleagues to enlighten the public about animal-related issues has had in 21st century Korea, a relatively new arrival to the scene of animal behavior, welfare and conservation.
American primatologist Dr. Michael Huffman, a mainstay of Japanese primatology for over 30 years, waxes (but never wanes) philosophically on life and work with us on The PrimateCast.
"When I grow up I'm going to Africa to live with chimpanzees"
Michael Huffman is Associate Professor in the Section of Social Systems Evolution, Department of Ecology and Social Behavior at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute. He's also the former PhD supervisor of your host, Andrew MacIntosh, giving the interview a rather personal feel.
In the interview, Dr. Huffman speaks in depth about how Japan and Kyoto University allowed him to chase after and fulfil his dreams as a young primatologist, weaving a captivating tale and allowing his infectious personality to shine.
Few can manage the sincerity with which Dr. Huffman approaches life and work, and this becomes abundantly clear in the interview, in which we spend more time discussing Dr. Huffman the human than Dr. Huffman the scientist.
"Be the monkey"
Michael Huffman is best known in primatology and behavioral ecology as the scientist who discovered self-medication in chimpanzees, an important anti-parasite defense strategy, and has advocated for its ubiquity throughout the animal kingdom. He has written extensively on this topic for both scientific and general audiences.
Dr. Huffman has also studied behavioral traditions in animals for decades, his main work beginning with the discovery of stone handling in Japanese macaques, a behavior which started with a single young female at Arashiyama in Kyoto and subsequently spread, as fashionable trends tend to do, throughout the group.
We discuss these and other projects in the interview to some degree, but don't worry, that just means we get to have him back in the studio in the near future for a follow up on all the exciting science he's involved in. Stay tuned...
On this first episode from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), great ape conservationist Jef Dupain shares his vision and missions as the Technical Director for Central and Western Africa of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) based in Nairobi, Kenya.
"AWF looks at sustainability ecologically, economically and socially"
Jef Dupain started his career as a primatologist, studying bonobos in the Lomako Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as a student at the University of Antwerp. In 2004, he decided to leave a prospective academic career to join AWF as a conservation practitioner. He’s now the director of the African Apes Initiative, which focuses on protecting great apes in both protected and non-protected areas of Africa.
With a clear view on the state of ape conservation in Africa, Dupain describes the different projects he and his team are working on to make conservation more sustainable in places that need it the most.
"My focus is to get those people out of isolation"
For Jef Dupain, the future of African ape conservation resides also in empowering local conservation practitioners by providing them with new technologies and organizing meetings to facilitate networking amongst them. For this purpose, we will have the pleasure of welcoming Jef Dupain and other African ape conservationists to the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute in November later this year (2016).
Photo credit: African Wildlife Foundation / Jef Dupain
Ellensburg, Washington – The Valley of the Wild Monkeys, China – and Kyoto University. How are they all connected?
In this episode, we chat with Drs Lori Sheeran and Steve Wagner of Central Washington University after their talks at the 5th International Symposium on Primatology and Wildlife Science. This year’s symposium was held right here in Inuyama, and PWS students had the chance to invite guest speakers from all over the world.
Life has a funny way of connecting the dots
In this installment of the podcast, podcast intern and co-host Sofi Bernstein gets the chance to catch up with her previous supervisors and discuss how Kyoto University, their work in China, and Central Washington University have been connected all along.
In this installment of The PrimateCast, Chris and Andrew report from the 24th Congress of the International Primatological Society which was held between August 12th and 17th, 2012, in Cancun, Mexico.
The podcast begins with a brief recap of some of our own experiences at the congress, followed by a discussion of the research that we presented.
We then provide a series of interviews conducted on location with 7 researchers in various fields of study, from genetics and behavioral ecology to psychology/cognition and conservation.
The list of interviewees is shown below, and listeners can jump straight to the desired segment of the podcast by clicking on any of the names on that list, though we naturally encourage everyone to tune in to the entire program for the full report.
In this installment of The PrimateCast we introduce a new series that CICASP launched in June 2021, the International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories about experienced researchers of primatology and related fields, through lectures delivered by those very individuals. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program, but we decided to release the audio right here on The PrimateCast.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to CICASP's YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
The first podcast in this lecture series brings you Dr. Michael Huffman, in a talk entitled "Learning to become a monkey and other lessons for becoming a primatologist".
"Make your dreams big so you can grow into them" -Michael Huffman, 2021
Mike is a pioneer in many ways. Perhaps most famous for his discoveries of self-medication in wild chimpanzees in Tanzania, he was also among the earlier scientists exploring topics like female mate choice and behavioral traditions - which we now know to be a form of animal culture - in Japanese macaques at Arashiyama Monkey Park in Kyoto, Japan).
But even the fact that he came to Japan to begin his career in the academy in his early twenties shows just what a pioneering spirit he has! But with mentors like the late Dr. Junichiro Itani, and a rich and active history of primatology in Japan, Mike found his way and eventually learned to become a monkey.
Mike presents his origin story here, in a talk entitled "Learning to become a monkey: and other lessons for becoming a primatologist". Watch it above or directly on YouTube.
Before getting into the interview, I announce with great sadness the passing of Dr. Steve Ross, as announced by Lincoln Park Zoo. Steve was a formidable figure in chimpanzee conservation and animal welfare science in general, in addition to being an all around good person and key figure at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. He will be missed.
This is also the first podcast released since the restructuring of the Primate Research Institute, which had an exceptional 55 year run as a leading primatological institute. I make a note of that as well before getting into the interview.
Now, Dr. Ikuma Adachi is no stranger to these parts, and he's been on the podcast twice before, way back in our second episode in April 2012, and again in March 2016 on Episode #20. Feel free to check those out in addition to listening to the current episode.
Ikuma is associate professor of Cogntiive Neuroscience at Kyoto University's new Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior (EHUB). He's also the new head of CICASP, assuming the role this month after a 5 year hiatus from being part of the center. But he's always had a big inlfuence on how we operate, so it was great getting him back in the studio.
In the interview, we discuss a range of topics, from internationaliation at Kyoto University to running a chimpanzee lab and managing the expectations of incoming students. We talk about his own experiences with chimpanzees and research in comparative cognitive science, and end with some speculations about the metaverse and humans in space...
In this installment of The PrimateCast we continue with our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field..
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories about experienced researchers of primatology and related fields, through lectures delivered by those very individuals. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program, but we decided to release the audio right here on The PrimateCast.
Unlike most academic lectures, which are usually focused on testing scientific hypotheses, this series is designed to offer a feel for how one becomes a professional in the field of primatology. In a way, we might think of it as a career primer for young primatologists just starting their own journeys into the nether regions of Academia. At the same time, anyone might enjoy the stories told of big dreams, exotic locations and species, and the humanity inherent in forging a new path in life and in work.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to CICASP's YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
"Ideas in science often evolve as the result of unexpected accidents" - Robin Dunbar
Prof. Dunbar is behind some key scientific ideas, such as the Social Brain Hypothesis - which has had ample success in explaining the distribution of higher forms of cognition across the animal kingdom - and Dunbar’s number, the iconic idea that there is a numerical cap on the number of relationships we can realistically maintain at any given time in our lives.
During the talk, he explains the origins of these ideas and their origins in his own fieldwork on primates and ungulates, as well as some accidental collaborations with people from a wide range of other disciplines.
Robin Dunbar is Professor Emeritus in Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford. You can find out more on our dedicated page for this event.
In this installment of The PrimateCast we continue with our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.
The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories about experienced researchers of primatology and related fields, through lectures delivered by those very individuals. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program, but we decided to release the audio right here on The PrimateCast.
Unlike most academic lectures, which are usually focused on testing scientific hypotheses, this series is designed to offer a feel for how one becomes a professional in the field of primatology. In a way, we might think of it as a career primer for young primatologists just starting their own journeys into the nether regions of Academia. At the same time, anyone might enjoy the stories told of big dreams, exotic locations and species, and the humanity inherent in forging a new path in life and in work.
For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to CICASP's YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.
The 5th podcast in our IPL series featured Dr. Elisabetta Visalberghi, who spoke to us back on October 13, 2021.
Dr. Visalberghi was the Research Director at the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies, part of the National Research Council of Italy, where she continues to act as Associate Research Scientist.
She is an author of around 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and cowrote The Complete Capuchin: The Biology of the Genus Cebus (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Her research has focused on the behavior and cognition of wild and captive primates, especially capuchin monkeys.
She is probably best known for her work on cognition and social learning in capuchins, and especially as they relate to the amazing use of hammer-and-anvil stone tools by capuchins to crack open nuts
In the podcast, Dr. Visalberghi runs through her background and how she got into primatology, highlighting the importance of serendipity in that process. The second half of her talk details her work on capuchin tool use and social learning.
In this installment of The PrimateCast, Andrew and Chris sit down with Dr. Roger Mundry, biostatistician in the Department of Primatology and the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
CICASP had invited Dr. Mundry to the Primate Research Institute in March, 2012, to give a week-long workshop in biostatistics with a focus on the general linear model and general issues in analyzing behavioral and ecological data.
We talked with Dr. Mundry about these issues, as well as some of the exciting work he is doing with primatologists and psychologists at MPI-EVA.
Between 3-6 December 2012, Chris and Andrew took their mobile podcast unit on the road to Kyoto for a conference at the International Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS) on the Evolutionary Origins of the Human Mind.
During the conference, we were able to sit down with five prominent primate scientists who were invited to the conference to speak about their work. This marks the first installment of this podcast series in which we chatted with Dr. Frans de Waal.
Dr. de Waal is the C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University, and director of Living Links at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
We chatted with Dr. de Waal about his groundbreaking comparative work into the evolution of human empathy, special considerations when working with chimpanzees, and his ties to Japan and Japanese primatology.
Dr. de Waal was featured by Time Magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2007, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, and has written many popular scientific books, including "Chimpanzee Politics", "Peacemaking among Primates", "The Ape and the Sushi Master", "The Age of Empathy", and many more.
In addition to the interview, you can check out some photos and video from our trip with Dr. de Waal to Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro's robotics lab, at which we were able to interact with two androids, the Geminoid and Telenoid. Find those here at Facebook and YouTube. Don't miss out!
Join us and Dr. Frans de Waal on The PrimateCast, and feel free to visit us at Facebook and Twitter and leave comments and feedback on this or any other podcast in the series. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The PrimateCast interviews Dr. Ralph Adolphs about emotion, the social brain, and the approaches he and his lab are using to understand these phenomena.
Dr. Ralph Adolphs is Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology.
The Adolphs Lab researches various topics related to emotion and social decision making in normal functioning as well as certain clinical populations such as people with autism spectrum disorder or certain brain lesions, using advanced techniques including brain imaging, eye-tracking and advanced computational methods such as machine learning.
We sat down with him over breakfast on Saturday, June 4, 2016 in Inuyama, Japan.
"How many [emotions] are there, how would we be able to tell, and then I think it starts to get complicated very quickly"
Dr. Adolphs was in Japan on sabbatical from March until June 2016 to work on a book he is co-authoring that focuses on emotion.
In the interview, Dr. Adolphs talks about the need to redefine how we think about emotion and in particular how we define it as an area of scientific investigation. He also talks at length about some of the approaches he and his colleagues are using to better understand the social brain, and how being at Caltech has facilitated this research.
An especially important point that comes up is the idea of ecological validity in modern psychological research. Some of Dr. Adolph's own work uses videos shown to study subjects, including clips from the famous British and American sitcom "The Office", which allows his team to understand what's going on in the brain when people are exposed to socially awkward situations, which often come up in that series.
It's such a pleasure to be able to share my interview with Dr. Susumu Tomiya, my colleague for the past 3+ years in the Center for International Collaboration and Advanced Studies in Primatology (CICASP).
Susumu and I have worked closely over that time toward developing our capacity at Kyoto University to teach science communication to our graduate students, and to encourage and promote their activities in various ways, such as through news stories on the CICASP website and co-developing educational programs with students themselves. Here are a couple of examples of Susumu's work in that regard, in interviews with graduate student Tianmeng He and postdoc Gao Jie about their research.
Susumu is an assistant professor, now based in the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at Kyoto University's new Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior (EHUB). But, he is a vertebrate paleonologist interested in mammalian diversity, with a background in studying extinct carnivorans in North America! You might wonder what he's up to at a research institute dedicated to the study of primates, and you can find out by listening to the podcast right here! To find out more about his research, visit his personal website.
In the interview, we discuss a pretty wide range of topics, from understanding biodiversity in an evolutionary context to contextualize biodiversity loss in the present and future, to exploring some of the amazing species he's studied (think, beardogs!). We then get on to the process of doing and communicating science, and onto science education, as Susumu has long been involved in the latter through programs at the museums he's worked at - including Chicago's famous Field Museum - and now through CICASP.
It was such a treat to record this interview, so I hope my enthusiasm for speaking with Susumu comes through, and that you all feel a little more nourished coming away from this interview with Dr. Susumu Tomiya as much as I did.
I was really excited about this interview. I've known our guest - Dr. Takeshi Furuichi - since I was a grad student in the Section of Social Systems Evolution at Kyoto University's now rebranded Primate Research Institute. He was the Section Head until this year when we were all redistributed together to the Wildlife Research Center.
"I want to behave like ... females of bonobos, but in reality I am a male chimpanzee"
Dr. Furuichi is considered a leading expert in the behavior of bonobos, and has gone to great lengths to better understand how and why they differ from their close cousins, the chimpanzees.
He runs the study site at Wamba village, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has continued to shed light on the evolution of the genus Pan and what it means for our own evolutionary story as well.
In the interview, we meander through a lot of interesting topics. We discuss why Japanese primatologists have almost exclusively studied Japanese macaques and African Great Apes. Dr. Furuichi then describes how the small village of Wamba in the middle of the Congo Basin became the setting for one of the most influential bonobo study sites in the world. And the trials and tribulations of those who made that happen!
Then we talk about bonobos and chimpanzees, how they're the same, how they differ, and why. This provides a great summary of his work and should be a great primer on ecology and evolution within the genus Pan.
And, he ends with a discussion of how he and his partner, Dr. Chie Hashimoto, are doubling down on uncovering the interrelationships between sex and society.
For anyone listening, it should become apparent early on that Dr. Furuichi is a great storyteller and drops loads of little nuggets of information and wisdom thorughout the interview. I hope you all enjoy listening to this interview as much as I did recording it.
For anyone interested in finding out more about hist work, you can visit Dr. Takeshi Furuichi's profile on the Wildlife Research Center's website. Use a translator where necessary (I recommend DeepL!).
I would also encourage you to visit the website for the NGO that Dr. Furuichi spearheaded called Support for Conservation of Bonobos, where you can learn more about bonobos, the jungles and people of Wamba, and the Kyoto University group's efforts to protect them.
I hope you enjoy this interview with Dr. Takeshi Furuichi on The Primatecast. When you're done, you can browse loads of other audio content from primatologists and conservationists from around the world.
Photo Caption: Takeshi Furuichi with local kids at Wamba Village in the DRC
In the first interview installment of The PrimateCast, former PRI director and current director of CICASP Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa discusses the history of primatology in Japan, from its humble beginnings on fabled Koshima Islet, through the development and continued progress of Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute and his own research on chimpanzee cognition.
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