My PhD will study social cognition in free-ranging vervet monkeys at the Inkawu Vervet Project, near Swart Mfolozi, South Africa. The site is located in Kwazulu-Natal on a 12,000h private ranch where multiple groups of fully habituated vervet monkeys have been studied for several years. The aim of my project is to investigate aspects of their social cognition, such as the degree to which individuals take the presence, identity and social role of other group members into account in their behavioural decisions. Thus, several experiments such as food experiments, predator fake experiments or play back experiments will be used to evaluate the call production of the vervet monkeys depending on the presence and composition of the audience.

This project supervised by Prof Klaus Zuberbühler & Dr. Erica van de Waal is part of the Inkawu Vervet Project .

Publications