Richard Wrangham | |
|---|---|
 Wrangham in 2016 | |
| Born | 1948 |
| Nationality | British |
| Employer(s) | Harvard University University of Michigan |
Richard Walter Wrangham (born 1948) is an English anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking.
Wrangham was born in Leeds, Yorkshire. [1]
Following his years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, he became the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and his research group is now part of the newly established Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. He is a MacArthur fellow. [2]
He is co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project, the long-term study of the Kanyawara chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda. [3] His research culminates in the study of human evolution in which he draws conclusions based on the behavioural ecology of apes. As a graduate student, Wrangham studied under Robert Hinde and Jane Goodall. [4]
Wrangham is known predominantly for his work in the ecology of primate social systems, the evolutionary history of human aggression (in his 1996 book with Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence and his 2019 work The Goodness Paradox ), and his research in cooking (summarized in his book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human ) and self-domestication.
Wrangham has been instrumental in identifying behaviors considered "human-specific" in chimpanzees, including culture [5] and with Eloy Rodriguez, chimpanzee self-medication. [4] [6]
Among the recent courses he teaches in the Human Evolutionary Biology (HEB) concentration at Harvard are HEB 1330 Primate Social Behaviour and HEB 1565 Theories of Sexual Coercion (co-taught with Professor Diane Rosenfeld from Harvard Law School). In March 2008, he was appointed House Master of Currier House at Harvard College. [7] He received an honorary degree in Doctor of Science from Oglethorpe University in 2011. [8]
Wrangham began his career as a researcher at Jane Goodall's long-term common chimpanzee field study in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. He befriended fellow primatologist Dian Fossey and assisted her in setting up her nonprofit mountain gorilla conservation organization, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (originally the Digit Fund). [9]
Wrangham has focused recently on the role cooking has played in human evolution. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human , he argued that cooking food is obligatory for humans as a result of biological adaptations and that cooking, in particular the consumption of cooked tubers, might explain the increase in hominid brain sizes, smaller teeth and jaws, and decrease in sexual dimorphism that occurred roughly 1.8 million years ago. [10] [11] [12] Some anthropologists disagree with Wrangham's ideas, arguing that no solid evidence has been found to support Wrangham's claims, though Wrangham and colleagues, among others, have demonstrated in the laboratory the effects of cooking on energetic availability: cooking denatures proteins, gelatinizes starches, and helps kill pathogens. [13] [14] [10] The mainstream explanation is that human ancestors, prior to the advent of cooking, turned to eating meats, which then caused the evolutionary shift to smaller guts and larger brains. [15]
Wrangham married Elizabeth Ross in 1980 and has three sons. [16] His work of studying the essential violence of chimpanzees caused Wrangham to not eat meat for 40 years. [17]
The chimpanzee, also simply known as the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close relative the bonobo was more commonly known as the pygmy chimpanzee, this species was often called the common chimpanzee or the robust chimpanzee. The chimpanzee and the bonobo are the only species in the genus Pan. Evidence from fossils and DNA sequencing shows that Pan is a sister taxon to the human lineage and is thus humans' closest living relative.
Primates is an order of mammals, which is further divided into the strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and lorisids; and the haplorhines, which include tarsiers and simians. Primates arose 85–55 million years ago first from small terrestrial mammals, which adapted for life in tropical forests: many primate characteristics represent adaptations to the challenging environment among tree tops, including large brain sizes, binocular vision, color vision, vocalizations, shoulder girdles allowing a large degree of movement in the upper limbs, and opposable thumbs that enable better grasping and dexterity. Primates range in size from Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, which weighs 30 g (1 oz), to the eastern gorilla, weighing over 200 kg (440 lb). There are 376–524 species of living primates, depending on which classification is used. New primate species continue to be discovered: over 25 species were described in the 2000s, 36 in the 2010s, and six in the 2020s.
The genus Pan consists of two extant species: the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Taxonomically, these two ape species are collectively termed panins. The two species were formerly collectively called "chimpanzees" or "chimps"; if bonobos were recognized as a separate group at all, they were referred to as "pygmy" or "gracile chimpanzees". Together with humans, gorillas, and orangutans they are part of the family Hominidae. Native to sub-Saharan Africa, chimpanzees and bonobos are currently both found in the Congo jungle, while only the chimpanzee is also found further north in West Africa. Both species are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and in 2017 the Convention on Migratory Species selected the chimpanzee for special protection.
Primatology is the scientific study of non-human primates. It is a diverse discipline at the boundary between mammalogy and anthropology, and researchers can be found in academic departments of anatomy, anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, veterinary sciences and zoology, as well as in animal sanctuaries, biomedical research facilities, museums and zoos. Primatologists study both living and extinct primates in their natural habitats and in laboratories by conducting field studies and experiments in order to understand aspects of their evolution and behavior.
In primatology, the Machiavellian intelligence or social brain hypothesis describes the capacity of primates to manuever in complex social groups. The first introduction of this concept came from Frans de Waal's book Chimpanzee Politics (1982). In the book de Waal notes that chimpanzees performed certain social maneuvering behaviors that he thought of as being "Machiavellian".
Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory, and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005). His research centered on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar is a British biological anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, and specialist in primate behaviour. Dunbar is professor emeritus of evolutionary psychology of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is best known for formulating Dunbar's number, a measurement of the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships".
Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution, was developed in the 1960s through early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Genes and culture continually interact in a feedback loop: changes in genes can lead to changes in culture which can then influence genetic selection, and vice versa. One of the theory's central claims is that culture evolves partly through a Darwinian selection process, which dual inheritance theorists often describe by analogy to genetic evolution.
Evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP) is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of evolution by natural selection, to understand the development of human behavior and cognition. It involves the study of both the genetic and environmental mechanisms that underlie the development of social and cognitive competencies, as well as the epigenetic processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions.
The control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the evolution of humans. Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators, a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed human activity to continue into the dark and colder hours of the evening.
Self-domestication is a scientific hypothesis that suggests that, similar to domesticated animals, there has been a process of artificial selection among members of the human species conducted by humans themselves. In this way, during the process of hominization, a preference for individuals with collaborative and social behaviors would have been shown to optimize the benefit of the entire group: docility, language, and emotional intelligence would have been enhanced during this process of artificial selection. The hypothesis is raised that this is what differentiated Homo sapiens from Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus.
Barbara Boardman Smuts is an American anthropologist and psychologist noted for her research into baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees, and a Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human is a 2009 book by British primatologist Richard Wrangham, published by Profile Books in England, and Basic Books in the US. It argues the hypothesis that cooking food was an essential element in the physiological evolution of human beings. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize.
Sexual swelling, sexual skin, or anogenital tumescence refers to localized engorgement of the anus and vulva region of some female primates that vary in size over the course of the menstrual cycle. Thought to be an honest signal of fertility, male primates are attracted to these swellings; preferring, and competing for, females with the largest swellings.
Toshisada Nishida was a Japanese primatologist who established one of the first long term chimpanzee field research sites. He was the first to discover that chimpanzees, instead of forming nuclear family-like arrangements, live a communal life with territorial boundaries. His discoveries of the medicinal use of plants by wild chimpanzees helped form the basis of the field of zoopharmacognosy.
David Andrew Whiten, known as Andrew Whiten is a British zoologist and psychologist, Professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology, and Professor Wardlaw Emeritus at University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is known for his research in social cognition, specifically on social learning, tradition and the evolution of culture, social Machiavellian intelligence, autism and imitation, as well as the behavioral ecology of sociality. In 1996, Whiten and his colleagues invented an artificial fruit that allowed to study learning in apes and humans.
Colin A. Chapman is a professor at the Vancouver Island University in British Columbia, Canada. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an Honorary Lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda, a Member of the Committee of Research and Exploration at National Geographic, and an Associate Scientists of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. Prior to taking on his position at McGill University, he was at the University of Florida in the Department of Zoology from 1993 to 2004. He is internationally recognized for his 30+ years of research into primate ecology, population regulation, nutrition, and disease dynamics and for his contribution to conservation globally.
Brian Hare is a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. He researches the evolution of cognition by studying both humans, our close relatives the primates, and species whose cognition converged with our own. He founded and co-directs the Duke Canine Cognition Center.
Vernon Reynolds is a British biological anthropologist known for his research on chimpanzee behavior and as founder of the Budongo Conservation Field Station. He has been described as "...one of a trio of pioneers who founded field studies of chimpanzees in the 1960s."
Primate archaeology is a field of research established in 2008 that combines research interests and foci from primatology and archaeology. The main aim of primate archaeology is to study behavior of extant and extinct primates and the associated material records. The discipline attempts to move beyond archaeology's anthropocentric perspective by placing the focus on both past and present primate tool use.
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