Hello from primatologist, anthropologist, educator

There's lots of wonderful and quirky science content on steemit, I thought I'd jump right in! Here's my quick personal introduction with a focus on my research.

I'm a graduate student getting a PhD in biological anthropology. I’m especially curious about how primates manage to get enough nutrients in challenging circumstances, and why this might impact the evolution of traits like teeth, aging, or sociality.

I use some telemetry equipment to track down some monkeys wearing radio collars in Argentina. Photo cred to my friend Greg K

While my job might sound like someone's in an ecology and evolutionary biology department, on a daily basis I tend to interact with people studying things like Homo erectus fossils, genetics of high altitude adaptation, or the evolution of menopause. Such different interests can make for pretty eclectic meetings, but question that unites us is "How did humans evolve? "

Primates have an important role in understanding human evolution. If we say something is unique in humans, we first must test that hypothesis by looking at our closest relatives. As a result, a lot of old ideas of what made humans unique have had to be cast aside.

At first, we thought only humans used tools and that this is what separated us from other animals. Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees fishing for termites back in the 1960’s. In response, anthropologist Richard Leakey said, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.” I always find it shocking that we didn’t know what our closest relatives were up to until we had already put a man on the moon.

A science gif I created. My first! Too fast? Too slow? How can I make it more clear? Sorry if you stumble across in the middle, it's kinda long. Please comment below :)

As a result, there are anthropologists who study primates all over the world (let’s call them primatologists, but not all primatologists are necessarily interested in humans). I’ve been lucky to work at several field sites all over the world.

Some primates I've studied in the wild: owl monkeys (Aotus azarae) in Argentina, red leaf-monkeys (Presbytis rubicunda) in Indonesia, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Uganda. Many primate fieldsites have been in operation for decades to study these long lived primates. Walk through a tropical forest, and you have a pretty decent chance of running into a primatologist.

Right now, I’m doing a long-term project in Uganda on chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are especially long-lived primates, reaching older than 60 years in the wild. Because most research has focused on prime-aged adults, we don’t know much about how they age. I’m studying a community to determine the feeding challenges faced by old apes and how they solve them.

We expect animals to behave differently over their lifespan to continue maximizing their reproductive success, but this hasn’t really been documented for old primates. Maybe, these old individuals keep trying to act like primate-age adults until the day they die, or alternatively, they adopt new strategies to deal with all the physical challenges of aging.

This is a female chimpanzee named Ma Rainey. She passed away recently at an estimated age of 57. Just look at that old face!!

To research this, I spend time following wild chimpanzees around. Sometimes it’s exciting, like when there’s big social drama like a patrol. Other times, it’s really boring, like when you’re with a solitary chimp who decides to nap for the afternoon.

But I’m not always following chimpanzees. Being a grad student means I spend the school year teaching at my university. Honestly, it’s one of the best parts of my job. Don’t believe everything you hear: college students can be polite, curious, and critical thinkers who care about more than their GPA.

One of the biggest challenges for higher education is to move beyond the limited lecture format, which can create gulfs between students and teachers, and reinforce existing biases in higher ed. I recommend this article, Are college lectures unfair? Experiential education FTW!

Thanks for being such a welcoming community that I felt excited to post this! I’m considering doing future posts on topics like: Why study primates? / Evolution of aging and Chimpanzees / Documentary portrayals of chimpanzees / Common misconceptions of human evolution. If you like any of these or have other suggestions, please comment and let me know.

Cheers steemit,
benfink