Catherine Hobaiter, Ape Talk: Reimagining the Study of Great Ape Communication.
May 25 2024, 15:00 BST/ 10:00 EDT/ 07:00 PST (3pm BST/ 10am EDT/ 7am PST)
Ape Talk: Reimagining the Study of Great Ape Communication.
In her talk, Dr. Catherine Hobaiter will delve into the research conducted at the Wild Minds Lab, focusing on exploring communication and cognition among wild apes and other species.
Like many researchers intrigued by interspecies communication, Catherine has spent much of her career exploring the different signals great apes use, asking questions such as, how do they combine them? And, what do they mean? Ultimately, her interest lies in truly comprehending what it means to be a chimpanzee, a gorilla, or a human. Catherine emphasizes that communication systems offer a lens and framework through which we can investigate what individuals of other species, and our own, are thinking and feeling. However, Catherine does express concerns regarding traditional approaches to studying communication, which often focus on cataloging the tools each species possesses, and may not adequately capture how communication functions within individuals, groups, and cultures across species.
Catherine will describe how her team is reimagining the study of non-human communication, to foster a deeper understanding of other species and the evolutionary origins of our own.
About the speaker
Cat is a field primatologist who has spent the past 20-years living with and studying wild primates across Africa. She is a Reader in Origins of Mind at the University of St Andrews and PI of the Wild Minds Lab. She still spends around half the year in the field, and heads a team of researchers exploring wild ape behavior. Her work explores what the communication of wild apes living in their natural environment tells us about how they think and the origins of our own behavior. She leads ape field sites in Uganda and Guinea and serves on expert groups for the UN and IUCN. Outside of work you usually find her up a mountain, or pottering in a shed with coffee.
