In the ZDF documentary series Terra X "Fascination Earth: Gabon - Africa's last paradise?", Hannah Emde reports from Gabon and presents the researchers' work in the Ozouga field station in Loango National Park. To watch the film, click here.

We are pleased to announce the publication of Bas van Boekholt's newest paper in "Frontiers in Psychology": Bodies at play: the role of intercorporeality and bodily affordances in coordinating social play in chimpanzees in the wild. For full text, click here.

We are pleased to annonce the brand new paper "Brain and function: A multidisciplinary pipeline to study hominoid brain evolution". For full text, click here.

We are pleased to announce a new paper (co-author Tobias Deschner): "Demographic and hormonal evidence for menopause in wild chimpanzees". For full text, click here.

Simone Pika gave a talk in the recent Kortizes Symposium "Naturgewalt und Geisteskraft - Menschwerdung in der Evolution" in Nuremberg. In her presentation titled "On the trail of the evolutionary roots of human incarnation" she talked about what we can learn from corvids and chimpanzees about our intelligence and communication.

We are pleased to announce that our PhD students Bas van Boekholt and Kayla Kolff won GfP conference awards. The Robert-Glaser-Conference-Grant supports conference travels for Bas and Kayla who will present their latest research on primates on upcoming conferences in Bielefeld (Behaviour 2023) and Rome (Protolang).
Bas will talk about "The role of bodily affordances in coordinating play in chimpanzees & Organized to learn: The influence of social structure on social learning opportunities in a group". Kayla talks about "Insights into non-human animal repair: The case of chimpanzee grooming". Congratulations!

We are pleased to announce that Jolinde Vlaeyen was awarded a DAAD grant. Her project is about "Communicative interactions in wild dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus)" where she will focus on similarities and differences to human conversational turn-taking. Her investigations on the bottlenose dolphins will take place in the Cedar Keys, Florida. Congratulations!

Fanny Tibesar was awarded a research grant from the Leakey Foundation for her project titled "Gestural signaling in adult sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys) in the wild: New and old measures to investigate flexibility and intentionality". Congratulations!

We welcome Alessandra Mascaro as a new PhD candidate on board of our team! She joined our group in July 2023. In her research, Alessandra will focus on wound tending behaviour in wild chimpanzees.

Simone took part in a podcast for children on radio Deutschlandfunk Kultur: "What do wild animals do when they are sick?" Here, she gives an explanation tailored for children of how chimpanzees help themselves with self-medication, for example when they have wounds. The podcast can be found here.

From 26th - 28th April 2023, our PhD candidates Lara Southern and Kayla Kolff attended the first international Multimodal Communication Symposium (MMSYM 2023) in sunny Barcelona, where they presented some of their PhD research.
Lara spoke about the "role of multimodality in the grooming interactions of chimpanzees in the wild", and Kayla on "communicative repair in nonhuman primates: the role of multimodality". 

On 3rd June, Simone gave a talk at the Annual Meeting of the Cusanuswerk, an episcopal foundation for the support of students. The meeting was under the motto "Help and Voluntary Commitment" and took place in beautiful Kasteel de Berckt near Venlo in the Netherlands. Simone spoke about cooperation and help from the perspective of cognitive and behavioral research.

We welcome Gudrun Müller as our new team member. She started in January 2023 and will take care of analysing video data of great apes and children with a focus on language, communication and turn-taking.

We welcome Frauke Olthoff on board of our team! Starting in January 2023, Frauke takes on the role as a fundraiser for the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project and research coordinator at our CBC group.

Check out our new paper in "Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution" on turntaking skills in mammals. For full text click here.

We are pleased to annouce a new article in September's National Geographic Magazine. "The doctors of the forest" is about how chimpanzees use insects for medication and wound-tending. Please see the trailer to the article on YouTube.