Biography
Cat Hobaiter grew up in Lebanon, England, and France. She has worked with primates in Uganda, and across Africa, for 15-years. She earned her PhD from the University of St Andrews in 2011, today her group here (the Wild Minds Lab) concentrates on long-term field studies of communication and cognition in wild African apes. She continues to spend around half the year in the field, and recently established new field sites in Uganda: the Bugoma Primate Conservation Project and in Guinea: the Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee Project. She likes good coffee and bad science-fiction.
You can find more about her research here https://wildminds.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ and here: http://greatapedictionary.ac.uk/ and find her on twitter @nakedprimate
Teaching
PS3036 Evolutionary and Comparative Psychology, Junior Honors
PS5010 Origins of Mind, MSc
Research areas
I study the evolution of communication and social behaviour, in particular through long-term field studies of wild chimpanzees and other apes. During my PhD I conducted the first systematic study of gestural communication in a wild ape, working in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda with the Sonso chimpanzee community. We have now extended this research across sites and ape species, and now even to other species such as elephants. Like humans, apes do not gesture or vocalize in isolation - their communication combines calls, gestures, facial expressions, and body postures; in order to better understand their communication and cognition we have integrated the study of all of these separate modalities into our study of communication. Through this work we hope not only to advance our understanding of great ape communication but also by looking at areas of overlap or species specific traits, we hope to gain an understanding of the evolutionary origins of language.
PhD supervision
- Charlotte Grund
- Gal Badihi
- Alexandra Safryghin
- Charlotte Wiltshire
- Harmonie Klein
- Matthew Henderson
Selected publications
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Open access
Applying collocation and APRIORI analyses to chimpanzee diets: methods for investigating nonrandom food combinations in primate self‐medication
Freymann, E., d'Oliveira Coelho, J., Hobaiter, C., Huffman, M. A., Muhumuza, G., Zuberbühler, K. & Carvalho, S., 31 Jan 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: American Journal of Primatology. Early View, 15 p., e23603.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Flexible grouping patterns in a western and eastern chimpanzee community
Koops, K., Akankwasa, W., Camara, H. D., Fitzgerald, M., Keir, A., Mamy, G., Matsuzawa, T., Péter, H., Vicent, K., Zuberbühler, K. & Hobaiter, C., 22 Jan 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: American Journal of Primatology. Early View, e23593.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Habitual ground nesting in the Bugoma Forest chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), Uganda
Hobaiter, C., Klein, H. & Gruber, T., 29 Jan 2024, In: American Journal of Primatology. 86, 2, 8 p., e23583.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
In search of animal normativity: a framework for studying social norms in non-human animals
Westra, E., Fitzpatrick, S., Brosnan, S. F., Gruber, T., Hobaiter, C., Hopper, L. M., Kelly, D., Krupenye, C., Luncz, L. V., Theriault, J. & Andrews, K., 24 Jan 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Biological Reviews. Early View, 17 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Many morphs: parsing gesture signals from the noise
Mielke, A., Badihi, G., Graham, K. E., Grund, C., Hashimoto, C., Piel, A. K., Safryghin, A., Slocombe, K. E., Stewart, F., Wilke, C., Zuberbühler, K. & Hobaiter, C., 4 Mar 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Behavior Research Methods. First Online, 18 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Shared semantics: exploring the interface between human and chimpanzee gestural communication
Henderson, M., Grosz, P. G., Graham, K. E., Hobaiter, C. & Patel-Grosz, P., 26 Feb 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Mind & Language. Early View, 18 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Chimpanzee culture in context: Comment on "Blind alleys and fruitful pathways in the comparative study of cultural cognition" by Andrew Whiten
Koops, K., Arandjelovic, M., Hobaiter, C., Kalan, A., Luncz, L., Musgrave, S., Samuni, L., Sanz, C. & Carvalho, S., Mar 2023, In: Physics of life reviews. 44, p. 77-80 4 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/debate › peer-review
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Open access
Decay rates of arboreal and terrestrial nests of Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the Bugoma Central Forest Reserve, Uganda: implications for population size estimates
Romani, T., Mundry, R., Shaban, G. M., Konarzewski, M., Namaganda, M., Hobaiter, C., Gruber, T. & Hicks, T. C., 1 Sept 2023, In: American Journal of Primatology. 85, 9, 12 p., e23536.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
DeepWild: application of the pose estimation tool DeepLabCut for behaviour tracking in wild chimpanzees and bonobos
Wiltshire, C., Lewis-Cheetham, J., Komedová, V., Matsuzawa, T., Graham, K. E. & Hobaiter, C., 1 Aug 2023, In: Journal of Animal Ecology. 92, 8, p. 1560-1574 15 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Dialects in leaf-clipping and other leaf-modifying gestures between neighbouring communities of East African chimpanzees
Badihi, G., Graham, K. E., Fallon, B., Safryghin, A., Soldati, A., Zuberbühler, K. & Hobaiter, C., 5 Jan 2023, In: Scientific Reports. 13, 11 p., 147.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review