Blog

Nov 29

New Publication on Animal Curiosity

Curiosity is an intrinsic motivation necessary for animals to acquire new information. One way to examine information seeking in animals, has been to present animals with novel objects and measure the way animals gather information through their explorative behaviors. In this study we assessed explorative behaviors in wild meerkats (Suricata... read more →
Nov 23
Oct 30

UVP celebrates 1 year! 

End of October we celebrated the first Birthday of the Urban Vervet Project by giving a public talk on our project progress at the Simbithi estate and a very nice local brai at one of the community centers. We were joined by some of our most faithful monkey lovers amongst... read more →
Oct 29
Arte filming Simbithi

Arte Filming the UVP

During this Field visit at Simbithi, I had the pleasure to host ARTE film crew, where the Urban Vervet Project will be featured. We absolutely enjoyed seeing our monkeys through the creative minds of Hevre and Alexandra.
Oct 25

Fieldtrip to the vervets of Simbithi 

After my time in Kalahari, I traveled across South Africa to my other study site, the Urban Vervet Project. Spending two amazing weeks with the current ground team of Stef, Paige, Adrian & Joey. We moved forward with heaps of field experiments, new data protocols, and lots of fun observations... read more →
Oct 15

Kick Off Field Season 2 for Meerkat Cognition Project

In October, the Meerkat Cognition Project’s ground team set up all the necessary data collection and experiments for Season 2 of our Field data collection. This year some meerkat groups gave birth to pups earlier than “normal” pup season start, so we are very excited to see the impact of... read more →
Oct 12

SPARK Grant for the Urban Vervet Project!

Celebration time again! In October 2023, I was lucky to receive a SPARK grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to fund the latest ideas developing for the Urban Vervet Project! Stay tuned for a new open position!
Oct 10

Family visit at the Kalahari Research Centre

During this year’s field trip, I had the privilege to introduce the Kalahari meerkats to my family, who joined the field team for two weeks. Luna representing generation II of meerkat lovers was at work very actively with her camera and learned so much about them out in the field.... read more →
Sep 02

Scientifica – UZH Public Science Festival

On September the 2nd, Sofia held a public talk at the Zoological Museum, University of Zurich “Studying wild animals in South Africa: meerkat cognition and urbanization in vervet monkeys” for the Scientifica Science Festival https://scientifica.ch/en/
Aug 18

Behaviour 2023 conference in Germany 

Sofia attended the Behaviour conference (link: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/biologie/forschung/veranstaltungen/behaviour2023/) in Bielefeld, Germany in August, where she gave two key note presentations as part of two different symposiums: "From the countryside to the city: cognitive and behavioural variation across human-altered environments" and “Animal Tool Innovations”.