Cooperative Breeding, Social Networks, And Health In The Agta w/ Abigail Page

Hello, everybody! I begin this week with an interview with Dr. Abigail Page. She is MRC Research Fellow at the Department of Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research is focused on understanding the relationship between the environment (both social and natural) and behavior, and ultimately how this influences health and wellbeing. Her background is in evolutionary approaches to human behavior (in particular Human Behavioral Ecology), therefore her research seeks to test hypotheses developed from evolutionary theory and ultimately, to understand the function of any given behavior. Dr. Page’s interests are also influenced by Evolutionary Medicine and Applied Evolutionary Anthropology and Demography.

In this episode, we talk about several aspects of human sociality from a human behavioral ecology perspective. We first discuss alloparenting, and the role of fathers. We talk about what we can learn about human nature from traditional societies. We then get into studies Dr. Page did with the Agta, a population of Filipino hunter-gatherers, and particularly what happens when some of their groups adopt a more sedentary agriculture-based lifestyle, particularly in terms of health, fertility and demography. Finally, we talk about how we can use this knowledge to help isolated hunter-gatherer tribes to thrive. 

https://youtu.be/3X_lU6cyLmA

Link to podcast version (Anchor): http://bit.ly/2LSiula