Dr Cat Hobaiter on BBC series Primates

Watch out for Dr Cat Hobaiter, of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, on the BBC’s new series, Primates. The programme, described as “the definitive celebration of the animals you thought you knew”, launched on Sunday 26 April with an episode on the Secrets of Survival revealing the extraordinary strategies monkeys, apes and lemurs use to survive in the most unexpected places.

Cat, is a consultant on Primates. She spoke to Jane Garvey on BBC’s Women’s Hour (11 mins in) about the series and its challenges. Across the three programmes, the team has tried to give a portrait of the primate family but, Cat explains, with 500 different species of primates it was hard to choose what to include.

Cat appears in the third episode of Primates which airs this weekon this week. The episode explains how chimpanzees communicate with gestures, as well as vocalisations. Cat has been studying wild populations in Uganda for 13 years, and is starting to be able to decode many of these gestures. You can watch a trailer for the episode online where Cat details the unique insights she has gained into chimpanzee communication.