On 27th June 2025, Yusuf Brima succesfully defended his PhD thesis titled: "Disentangled representation learning in speech and vocalizations". Simone Pika was his second supervisor. Congratulations, dear Dr. Brima!

It is with pleasure to announce a new article in Scientific Reports, co-authored by Tobias Deschner: "Oxytocin activity is not linked to out-group prosociality in wild bonobos". For full article, click here. 

We are pleased to announce the newest paper of Yannick Becker et al. (co-authored by Tobias Deschner, Simone Pika consortium member) "Long arcuate fascicle in wild and captive chimpanzees as a potential structural precursor of the language network", published on 15th May in Nature Communications. For full article, click here.

We are delighted to announce that Kayla Kolff has successfully finished her PhD. In her doctoral thesis titled "Communicative underpinnings in grooming interactions of wild-living chimpanzees" she investigated the turn-taking abilities of Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) living in Kibale National Park in Uganda where she particularly focused on the context of grooming. Her defense on 23rd April 2025 marked the end of a succesful doctorate. Congratulations!

It is with pleasure to announce the publication of our new paper "Turn-Taking in grooming interactions of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild: The role of demographic and social factors"by Kayla Kolff and Simone Pika. Click here to see the article.

Simone Pika's paper "How do ravens' thinking skills compare to apes'?" (2021) has now been included in the digital magazine "Cultivating Curiosity" by Macmillan Education India and will be shared with 10,000 schools throughout India and the Middle East. As part of MacMillan's initiative "Budding Scientists", it will reach over 1 million students of middle school age. Check out this article (from page 36) here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h6H13kTzCNmUZF7Xz3dvnW83STQx02oN/view?usp=sharing>."
 

Check out the newest paper of Bas van Boekholt and Simone Pika in Evolution and Human Behaviour: "Infrastructure of mother-infant interactions across development in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in the wild". Click here for full pdf.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Tobias Deschner received a Fall 2024 Leakey Grant.
For further information click here. The Grant is about a field experiment on innovation of nut cracking in wild chimpanzees.

Please see the latest New York Times article "Mother chimp and daughter share a special sign" about a study from our alumnus Dr. Bas van Boekholt about mother and daughter chimps sharing special gestures.

It is with pleasure to announce that Filipa Abreu acquired a Hunt Postdoctoral fellowship from the Wenner-Gren-Foundation. The title is: "Conversations in the forest: From vocal to gestural turn-taking in wild common marmosets". Congratulations!

We are pleased to announce the new paper of Bas van Boekholt et al. in "Animal Cognition". For full pdf, click here:

We are pleased to announce that Bas van Boekholt finished his dissertation. In this doctoral thesis titled "Turn-taking in mother-infant interactions across development in chimpanzees (Pan trogodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild" he aimed to enhance our understanding of evolutionary roots of conversational turn-taking and its development by focusing on the behaviour of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. His defense on 5th September marked the end of a succesful doctorate. Congratulations!

We are pleased to announce the new paper of Yusuf Brima (Ph.D. Candidate) et al. published as a Tiny Paper at ICLR 2024: "Learning Disentangled Audio Representations Through Controlled Synthesis". For full text, click here.

We welcome Leonardo Chaves who joined the CBC group in April 2024. He is working as a Postdoc with a special research focus on the origins of medical systems and the factors influencing the utilization of medicinal plants.

We are pleased to announce the begin of a collaboration between the Université des Sciences et Techniques de Masuku (USTM) in Gabon and the CBC workgroup in an innovative student pilot project: with the support from the CBC, two Gabonese Master Students from the USTM will study the tooluse behavior in wild chimpanzees and fly sounds at the Ozouga field station in Gabon. The project is financed by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Culture, Lower Saxony, Germany.

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 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.