Bonobo Societies, And Comparative Psychology w/ Zanna Clay

Hello, everybody! We begin the week with an interview with Dr. Zanna Clay. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University. She is a comparative and developmental psychologist with expertise in primatology. She studies and compares great apes and young children in order to investigate the evolutionary and developmental basis of hominid social cognition and behavior. Her main interests are the development & evolution of social cognition and communication, focusing on empathy, language and social learning.

In this episode, we focus mostly on bonobo societies and their behavior. We talk first about their sociality. Then we go through the different types of calls that they have, related to food, alarm calls, and sex. We also ask how far back in evolution do vocalizations go, and the cognitive tools needed to produce them, and also about a possible phylogenetic relationship between animal vocalizations and human language. We explore the social functions of sex in bonobo societies. We also discuss socio-emotional competence in bonobos, and how we can compare their development with the one of human infants. Finally, we address the question if there is a best primate (great Ape) model to compare to humans.

https://youtu.be/S76bSvOK2bE

Link to podcast version (Anchor): https://bit.ly/2vWll7s