Recently our field team has detected how our semi-urban monkeys are raiding newly introduced bird feeders within our study site of Simbithi Eco Estate, South Africa. We are now excited to zoom in on this innovative behavior to understand more of underlying cognitive processes and document its spread across our... read more →
May
29
May
22
We are currently looking for a passionate fieldworker to join our data collection team at the Kalahari Research Centre. Using both observational end experimental methods you will be studying the cognitive development, sociality and ecology in a wild meerkat (Suricata suricatta) pups. Starting date October 2023. For more information, please... read more →
May
22
This MSc project will focus on identifying different types of alarm calls and the context in which they are used in a semi urban vervet monkey population. In particular, we are interested in studying responses to dogs, and other anthropogenic introduced threats in the habitat of this population. The project... read more →
Apr
03
From April on Dr. Elisa Bandini officially joined my research team at the Animal Behaviour Group at the University of Zurich. Elisa and I will be working on the experience effects on chimpanzee cognition, and we warmly welcome her whole family to Switzerland!
Dec
20
Listen to my Contribution on Apes, Evolution and Curiosity Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/choosetobecurious/ep-184-curiosity-in-apes-with-sofia-forss?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fchoosetobecurious%252Fep-184-curiosity-in-apes-with-sofia-forss Here you find the Podcast: Choose to be curious
Dec
11
Beyond excitement that together with Dr. Elisa Bandini, we won this year’s Early Career Award from the Einstein Foundation promoting quality in research. The Award of €100,000 goes to our ARI (Ape Research Index) project. This project gives us a chance to investigate how previous experience affect chimpanzees’ cognitive performance,... read more →
Dec
05
End of November I visited the ground team at Simbithi: Stephanie and Lindsey, who are making incredible progress in documenting all the different monkey groups we have in the study area and learning the monkey identities and individual characteristics. We were also invited to present our project at the community’s... read more →
Nov
02
We are all beyond excitement to kick off the new branch of the Inkawu Vervet Project, namely the URBAN VERVET PROJECT - starting this November. Check out our beautiful new logo drawn by Alice Taylor (above). On the ground at the Simbithi Eco Estate our team members Stephanie and Lindsey... read more →
Oct
19
From October 2022 onwards I have been accepted as an Honorary Research Fellow at our collaborating South African University of Kwazulu-Natal. This is wonderful news for maintaining our local collaboration relationship with Prof. Colleen Downs and her team as well as to foster future work together between our institutions.
Sep
28
In this article we compared four different great ape species in their intrinsic curiosity levels. This means we conducted the experiments with each ape alone, to control for the fact that ape curiosity to large extent is socially triggered. Our results suggest that curiosity followed a linear gradient across the... read more →