The PrimateCast

Send us Fan Mail

In this installment of The PrimateCast we introduce a new series that CICASP launched in June 2021, the International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.

The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories about experienced researchers of primatology and related fields, through lectures delivered by those very individuals. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program, but we decided to release the audio right here on The PrimateCast.

For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to CICASP's YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.

The first podcast in this lecture series brings you Dr. Michael Huffman, in a talk entitled "Learning to become a monkey and other lessons for becoming a primatologist".

"Make your dreams big so you can grow into them"
-Michael Huffman, 2021

Mike is associate professor in the Section of Social Systems Evolution at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute.

Mike is a pioneer in many ways. Perhaps most famous for his discoveries of self-medication in wild chimpanzees in Tanzania, he was also among the earlier scientists exploring topics like female mate choice and behavioral traditions - which we now know to be a form of animal culture - in Japanese macaques at Arashiyama Monkey Park in Kyoto, Japan).

But even the fact that he came to Japan to begin his career in the academy in his early twenties shows just what a pioneering spirit he has! But with mentors like the late Dr. Junichiro Itani, and a rich and active history of primatology in Japan, Mike found his way and eventually learned to become a monkey.

Mike presents his origin story here, in a talk entitled "Learning to become a monkey: and other lessons for becoming a primatologist". Watch it above or directly on YouTube.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast is Dr. Cécile Sarabian, co-host of this very podcast and producer of Conservation Voices for The PrimateCast. I interviewed Cécile just before she departed Japan to begin the next stage of her life and career...

Cécile spent the better part of 9 years with us here in Inuyama City at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, so there is also a good deal of tripping down memory lane in the podcast. But we do try to stay focused and talk about some cool science as well.

It's a dirty job...

Cécile has made a bit of a name for herself internationally as a pioneering researcher focusing on evolutionary origins of hygiene and disgust in the animal kingdom, especially in primates.

We talk about this research, including some of her experimental results - discoveries made after presenting study subjects with some intrigiung foraging decisions involving contaminants like feces and rotten foods! - that have garnered a fair amount of appeal in the popular media. You can see a couple of those popular articles here and here.

In the podcast, we also talk about Cécile's own development and the importance of mentors therein. We spend some time talking about someone very important to Cécile, the late Dr. Val Curtis who worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose influential book Don’t Look, don’t touch: the science behind revulsion was instrumental in the development of Cécile's research and whose activism in human hygiene inspired Cécile to think about how she could apply her research as a force of good the world.

For anyone interested in more info about Dr. Val Curtis, check out her Wikipedia page and I highly recommend her inaugural lecture at the LSHTM, which was recorded in the months leading up to her death in September 2020.

She was a brilliant scientist and inspirational human, and will definitely be missed.

I'm sure we've not seen the last of Dr. Cécile Sarabian on The Primatecast, but join us for her fairwell-for-now podcast, and browse among loads of other audio content from primatologists and conservationists from around the world.

Photo Credit: Andrew MacIntosh

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast and Conservation Voices is Dr. Anne Laudisoit, senior scientist at EcoHealth Alliance in New York City, who visited us at the Primate Research Institute last month between two field trips in eastern DRCongo.

Plague, monkeypox and more

In the podcast, Dr. Laudisoit starts by coming back to her disease biology background and how her fascination with zoonotic diseases started… trapping rats in Kinshasa as a master’s student!

She then goes into more detail about the One Health approach through some zoonotic diseases she has been studying from a fieldwork point of view, such as plague in Tanzania, monkeypox in DRC, as well as their intermediate, accidental (-often us) and ultimate hosts!
 
From field experience to field experience, we can hear Anne’s passion for her work, the biodiversity she encounters, and the projects of which she is a part, such as EcoHealth Alliance’s PREDICT project, which aims to predict future viral epidemics globally.

A newly discovered population of chimpanzees

In the second part of the interview, Anne shares the other side of her fieldwork: Primatology!

In 2015, while sampling for pathogens and meeting with locals in the Blue Mountains Region, in the northeast of the DRCongo, Anne and colleagues find a chimpanzee community living along this high-altitude fragmented landscape.

Two years later, she comes back with a team of Congolese researchers from the University of Kisangani (UNIKIS) and the Biodiversity Monitoring Center (CSB), as well as a photojournalist friend, Caroline Thirion, to explore the region and make a film called MBUDHA about their expedition and the incredible biodiversity they encounter… including chimpanzees that live near a stream called Mbudha ("water of chimpanzees" in the Kibale language).

Photo Credit: Heungjin Ryu

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast is Dr. Valeria Romano, who shares with us a series of interviews she conducted with conservation scientists during a meeting on the “Strategic Planning for the Conservation of Golden Lion Tamarins” run by the Save the Golden Lion Tamarin Association in 2018.

Have a beer on the golden lion tamarin

In the podcast, Dr. Romano introduces us to golden lion tamarins and why they are in special need of our attention as endangered species.

We weave between discussions in the studio and interviews done in Brazil with five conservation scientists, including Dr. Luis Paulo Ferraz, Dr. Carlos Ruiz-Miranda, Dr. Jenniffer Mickelberg, Dr. Marcos Freire, and Dr. James Dietz. Each brings a unique perspective and a unique contribution to the conservation of this endangered species.

You can also hear about various ways in which you can support their conservation (e.g. beers for conservation!).

We'd like to thank all of our guests, who generously shared their tme and expertise with us for this program.

Photo Credits: Valeria Romano / Save the Golden Lion Tamarins (www.savetheliontamarin.org)

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit to cover the joint meetings of the International Primatological Society and American Society for Primatologists held between August 21-27, 2016.

Last year's congress was hosted by the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes of Lincoln Park Zoo, and the conference was held at Navy Pier in Chicago, USA.

The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Chris Whittier

I was really excited to be able to chat with Dr. Chris Whittier at last year's IPS in Chicago. Chris and I met a few years earlier while bunking together at a symposium held by some colleagues in the Czech Republic, so it was good to sit down and catch up!

Chris is a wildlife veterinarian with a PhD in population medicine, and is currently working in the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, where he also directs a Master's program in conservation medicine.

Chris was at IPS presenting his work on applied wildlife veterinary medicine in a symposium titled "Advances in health research at the interface of humans and nonhuman primates", chaired by Dr. Dominic Travis.

In the interview, we discuss his experience working literally to save the lives of African great apes through Gorilla Doctors, previously the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.

We get into the sticky issues of wildlife health interventions, sometimes lumped into the category of 'extreme conservation', and discuss the importance of health surveillance and, if necessary, intervention in wildlife conservation.

Visit his academic page here for more information on his expanding activities in wildlife health and conservation. 

We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Chris Whittier for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018. 

Photo Credit: Chris Whittier / Gorilla Doctors

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

The PrimateCast rolled out its mobile podcasting unit to cover the joint meetings of the International Primatological Society and American Society for Primatologists held between August 21-27, 2016.

Last year's congress was hosted by the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes of Lincoln Park Zoo, and the conference was held at Navy Pier in Chicago, USA.

The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Fabian Leendertz

As a practicing primate infectious disease ecologist myself, it was really great for me to get the chance to chat with Dr. Fabian Leendertz, who heads up the Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms Project Group at the Robert Koch Institut in Berlin.

Dr. Leendertz was at IPS presenting his work on great ape respiratory diseases in a symposium titled "Advances in health research at the interface of humans and nonhuman primates", chaired by Dr. Dominic Travis.

Dr. Leendertz has been involved in some pretty high profile work examining the emergence and persistence of pathogens such as Ebola and Anthrax in wildlife, and what these and other infectious diseases mean for great ape health, population viability and conservation.

In the interview, we discuss some of this work, what it's like going in to an Ebola zone shortly after the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, what kills great apes in the forest, and what we know and still need to know about primate disease. Visit his research group here for more information on their activities. 

We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Fabian Leendertz for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018. 

Photo Credit: Fabian Leendertz / © TMF e.V.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

The PrimateCast has rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again, this time to cover the joint meetings of the International Primatological Society and American Society for Primatologists held between August 21-27, 2016.

This year's congress was hosted by the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes of Lincoln Park Zoo, and the conference was held at Navy Pier in Chicago, USA.

The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Charlie Nunn

As a practicing primate infectious disease ecologist myself, it was really great for me to get the chance to chat with Dr. Charlie Nunn, who has been asking really big questions in this field over the past decade and a half or so.

Dr. Nunn is a Professor at Duke University's Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, as well as its Global Health Institute. He's also Director of the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine.

Dr. Nunn was at IPS presenting his work in a symposium on the evolution of sleep.

In the interview, Dr. Nunn walks us through his background and how he became interested in the comparative evolution of primate infectious disease. We talk about the Global Mammal Parasite Database - an online repository for published information about parasites infecting mammalian hosts - and how that marvellous idea came about, and how much work it must require to maintain!

We also discuss his more recent work about the evolution of sleep, and why humans might not sleep as much as would be expected for a primate on our branch of the evolutionary tree.

Visit the Nunn lab to find out more about his research into the evolutionary ecology of why we get sick. 

We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Charlie Nunn for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018. 

Photo Credit: Chris Martin / Andrew MacIntosh / Charlie Nunn

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

The PrimateCast has rolled out its mobile podcasting unit once again, this time to cover the joint meetings of the International Primatological Society and American Society for Primatologists held between August 21-27, 2016. This year's congress was hosted by the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes of Lincoln Park Zoo, and the conference was held at Navy Pier in Chicago, USA.

The PrimateCast On Location at IPS 2016 with Dr. Karen Strier

In this edition, we sat down with Dr. Karen Strier, Vilas Research Professor and Irven Devore Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During the conference, Dr. Strier took the reigns as incoming president of the International Primatological Society from outgoing president and Kyoto University distinguished professor Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa. We talked briefly about this, but spent the bulk of the interview discussing her long term research with muriquis in Brazil and how her work as well as the field of primatology, which she herself has helped mould through education and outreach, have developed over the last few decades. 

As author of numerous primatological works, including the hugely influential series Primate Behavioral Ecology, now in its 5th print edition, Dr. strier has been a leader in the field and an inspiration to generations now of primatologists. Her energy and devotion to research, education and conservation are evident throughout the interview. Get ready to be inspired, as we look forward to good things to come during Dr. Strier's tenure as IPS president over the next 4 years.

We'd like to sincerely thank Dr. Karen Strier for joining us on this episode, as well as all of our guests on this series of podcasts from our coverage of the 26th Congress of the International Primatological Society and 39th Congress of the American Society of Primatologists. We look forward to Nairobi 2018. Be sure to check out our other podcasts featuring interviews with leading scientists in primatology and beyond.

Join us and all our friends at IPS/ASP on The PrimateCast, and visit our official webpage @ theprimatecast.com to find loads of content from primatologists and conservationists around the world. You can also visit (and Like/Follow) us on Facebook and Twitter and leave comments and feedback on this or any other podcast in the series. You can also follow our RSS feed, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes to keep up with the latest content.

Photo Credit: Saki Higaki / CICASP

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!

Send us Fan Mail

IUCN World Conservation Congress, Honolulu, Hawaii - September, 2016.

Conservation Voices correspondent Cecile Sarabian attended the screening of “Blood Lions”, a film portraying the lucrative and legal business of canned lion hunting in South Africa. The screening was followed by a discussion with Dr. Andrew Venter – Executive producer and CEO of Wildlands Conservation Trust.

Bloody business

“Every single day in South Africa, at least two to three captive-bred or tame lions are being killed in canned hunts. And hundreds more are slaughtered annually for the lion bone trade. The Blood Lions story is a compelling call to action to have these practices stopped.”

South Africa is one of the only places in the world that breeds lions commercially for hunting.

The legality of canned lion hunting

At the September 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress, the world’s top scientists, government representatives, non-profit organizations, and experts including Andrew Venter adopted motion 009 on Terminating the hunting of captive-bred lions (Panthera leo) and other predators and captive breeding for commercial, non-conservation purposes.

A good start, which unfortunately was not followed up in Johannesburg at the CITES CoP17 meeting late September, as the 182 countries present did not reach consensus on banning all international trade in African lions, from trophy heads to bones.

Although the majority of participants agreed on banning the trade in bones, teeth and claws from wild lions, the Department of Environmental Affairs of South Africa recently decided to export 800 captive-bred lion skeletons annually to feed southeast Asian traditional medicine.

In this interview with Dr. Andrew Venter, we come back to the issues and challenges depicted in the film about canned hunting and wildlife conservation in South Africa.

Photo Credit: Reuters / Ali Jarekji

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

• Connect with us on Facebook, X, or Instagram
• Subscribe where you get your podcasts
• Email [email protected] with thoughts and comments

If you value the show, leave ratings and reviews wherever it is that you listen, and consider donating by clicking the "Support the Show" link above. 

Thanks for being part of The PrimateCast Community!