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Life Under the Canopy - Survival Tips for Primate Research.

All too often students begin fieldwork full of anticipation and high hopes for big adventure, only to end up burned out and on their way home within a month. This has inspired me to write a post about what it takes to survive primate behavioural research for people who may be considering taking this "road less traveled by" in the future. I won't water it down for you; primate research is not for everyone. Fieldwork is an uphill road, overloaded with obstacles that will test your personal strength every step of the way. (Perhaps there's a reason we opted to leave the forest and culture up our lives, oh so many years ago :). But if you've got what it takes to push yourself beyond the comforts of the average everyday world, and you're interested in finding out just how strong an individual you really are, then studying primates is one of the most inspirational and rewarding jobs available! Think you've got what it takes? Here are my tips for what it...
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Jane Goodall, Gibbons, and A Little Girl’s Dream.

Many people ask me how I got into studying gibbons for a living, and quite honestly there is no direct answer to that question, because it wasn’t a direct route. When I was growing up in Burlington, I wanted to be many things: first on the list (so I’m told by my parents) was a “ballerina hockey player” but that’s too far back for me to even remember saying, and I don’t really dance or skate these days so that was probably a bit of a stretch. One clear target that I do know from as far back as I can remember is that I always wanted to get my PhD. By the time I was about 4 or 5 years old, I had firmly established in my mind that I wanted to be called “Dr. Prime” when I grew up because that’s my Dad’s name (he has a PhD in chemistry), and I wanted to be like my Dad. So from the moment I first started school until this very day, that destination has always firmly held the course, and thus likely guided the navigation parameters since then. The rest of the story follows with many sente...
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Hands and Brains Are Super Cool in Humans. Turns Out, They're Super Cool in Gibbons Too!

Quoting Fan et al. (2017): “Group-level manual laterality in humans is related to hemispheric functional lateralization and cognitive functions”.... Just kidding, sometimes hand and brain stuff can sound very complex and confusing, we know! So here's the lowdown just for you: The intricate and detailed connections in primates between how our brains function and how our hands work IS really complex. And it’s REALLY cool too! Because when you take a moment to pause and appreciate how amazing it is that you can think a thought in your mind with your imagination and then actually bring that idea to life in the physical world by using your hands, it’s an astonishing reminder of just how amazing our human bodies really are. Your dog can’t do that. Nor can your cat, or the bird flying by outside. Not even that raccoons who manage to pull the lid off the garbage cans no matter how hard you try to stop them from getting in there, can use their brains and hands the way we do. ...
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