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.

The Research Training Group "Situated Cognition" offers new PhD positions - one of them being supervised by Simone Pika.
Further information on the application process can be found here. For more details of our subproject click here. We look forward to receiving your applications!

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.

We are pleased to announce that our student Emily Campos Sindermann won this year's GfP award (Gesellschaft für Primatologie) for the best thesis. In her thesis "Turn-taking in captive female geladas (Theropithecus gelada)" she investigated whether geladas engage in turn-taking which has been suggested an ancient mechanism of language faculty. Congratulations!

Osnabrück elementary school student Marlene Keeb showed that research can also be interesting for children. As part of the WWU Münster's Forder-Förder-Project (FFP), Marlene gave a lecture at the WWU Münster. She reported about chimpanzees in the African Gabon, their habitat, appearance and intelligence. The project is an offer of the International Center for Research on Giftedness (ICBF) of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster for pupils with special talents in primary and secondary schools. You can find more info about the project here.

We welcome Alessandra Mascaro as new research assistant and Frauke Olthoff as guest researcher at CBC!

For our newest article "Intentional gestural communication amongst red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus)" click here: pdf

Check out our new paper in "Current Biology" on insect medication in chimpanzees: "Application of insects to wounds of self and others by chimpanzees in the wild".
For full text click here.

On 14th January 2022, we opened with our president, Prof. Susanne Menzel-Riedel, and Prof. Dominik Krinninger, a board member of the CEDER (https://www.ceder.uni-osnabrueck.de/startseite.html), our new child lab, the Interaction Island. We are hoping for many interested children and parents to meet us!

Congratulations to our Bas van Boekholt, who received a research grant from the Leakey Foundation to investigate the role of turn-taking in social interactions of infant chimpanzees in the Ngogo community, Kibale National Park in Uganda. This grant will fund his second field season as well as two assistents assisting in data collection and coding of the data after he returns from the field.

We welcome Jolinde Vlaeyen and Fanny Tibesar as new CBC team members.

"Climate change could be behind lethal chimpanzee attacks on gorillas". In an interview with Metro World News, Simone Pika explained what may have caused the interspecific lethal attacks. For text and interview click here: pdf

Lara Southern published a new paper: "Lethal coalitionary attacks of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) on gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in the wild". For full text click here: pdf

Laura Martinez-Inigo published a new paper about the Rekambo chimpanzee community: "Home range size in central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) from Loango National Park, Gabon". The article can be found here.

Samuel H. Cosper published the article "Development of the N400 for Word Learning in the First 2 Years of Life: A Systematic Review" in "Frontiers in Psychology". For full text click here: pdf

Laura Martinez-Inigo, who worked as a volunteer at Loango for a year, just published a paper on "Intercommunity interactions and killings" in our chimpanzee group. Congratulations! The article can be found here.

New article by National Geographic on chimp mothermood featuring our Kayla:
"Chimpanzee moms are like us: They mourn, dote and take 'me' time".
For full article click here.

A children's version of our new paper on ravens has just been published in the Science Journal for Kids and Teens: "How do ravens' thinking skills compare with apes?" For full text click here.

"Im Dschungel tragen wir Maske": Tobias Deschner from the Loango Chimpanzee Project in Gabon about his chimpanzee research in the African Savannah. Please find the full interview here.

Our new paper on ravens "Ravens parallel great apes in physical and social cognitive skills" has just been published in "Scientific reports". Simone Pika and colleagues investigated the cognitive performance of young ravens and compared them with those of chimpanzees and orang-utans.
The full paper can be found here: pdf
Further information in the press release: pdf

Our paper "Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) exploit tortoises (Kinixys erosa) via percussive technology" published in Scientific Reports has been chosen to be included in the Editors's Choice Collection on Animal cognition and personality! Learn more

Congratulations to Harmonie Klein, who got a research grant from the Leakey Foundation to study cooperation in chimpanzees of our Rekambo group (Loango Chimpanzee Project, Gabon) shown during hunting and food sharing. Cooperation with Tobias Deschner from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Grantee Spotlight: A very interesting interview with Harmonie can be found here.