Next Friday 24th October at 1pm, I will be giving my Inugural Lecture!
All are extremely welcome. If you would like to attend online (or in person), please can you complete this form? Then I can send you a meeting link and/or if you'd like the recording

forms.gle/UZmAMt5VXNZN...

Woo new paper! Cross-cultural investigation into maternal responses to infant distress

How babies are soothed may be more important than how quickly, which vary cross-culturally

w/Carlo Vreden & team in #DevelopmentalPsychology!
Open-access link + thread 👇
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Some fancy chocs arrived to thank me for my review for the Branco Weiss Fellowship, very thoughtful

The Swiss do things better 😊

New paper alert!

Bonobos are often cited as the 'most empathic ape' yet a comparison to their chimp cousins has never been done. So we directly compared their consolation tendencies

We found big overlaps between the two species plus considerable within-species variation

open-access link below!

He also defied the odds in many ways- including achieving incredible weight loss in his latter years and surviving into his 40s, an age far older than most male bonobos reach in captivity

The loss of a legend- Kanzi, the language-competent bonobo, has died age 44.
Kanzi was exceptional in so many ways and offered us profound insights into the linguistic & cognitive capacities of great apes. He has taught us so much and will be hugely missed.
www.apeinitiative.org/remembering-...

Inside the sex lives of chimpanzees: like humans and other species, it’s about much more than just reproduction

New piece in @ConversationUK about our new @royalsociety research study on the social role of sex in chimps and bonobos. @durhampsych.bsky.social

theconversation.com/inside-the-s...

New paper alert! Sex and strife in our closest ape relatives

Our paper in @RSocPublishing shows that bonobos and chimpanzees overlap in their use of sex during social tension

-w Jake Brooker and coauthors inc the late Frans de Waal, his last paper

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

We found that nose temperature changes were strongest in response to crying (& laughing) vs artificial aversive sounds and neutral babbling. Behaviourally, infants also reacted more strongly to crying. Our results suggest that infants experience emotional contagion in response to others' distress.