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Richard Wrangham

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Richard W. Wrangham (born 1948) is a British primatologist. He is 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 co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project,[1] the long-term study of the Kanyawara chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda. 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.[2]

Demonic Males Apes and the Origins of Human Violence
Demonic Males Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

He is the co-author of the book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence with Dale Peterson. He is also a vegetarian.

Along with Eloy Rodriguez, Wrangham helped to introduce the concept of zoopharmacognosy.[2] Wrangham is considered "one of the pioneers of the study of chimp self-medication".[3]

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.

Research

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).[4]

Wrangham's latest work focuses on the role cooking has played in human evolution. He has argued that cooking food is obligatory for humans as a result of biological adaptations[5][6] 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.[7][8] Most anthropologists disagree with Wrangham's ideas, pointing out that there is no solid evidence to support Wrangham's claims[9][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.[11] [12]

Bibliography

  • Wrangham, R. (1980). "An ecological model of female-bonded primate groups." Behaviour, 75, 262–300.
  • Wrangham, R. and Smuts, B. B. (1980). "Sex differences in the behavioural ecology of chimpanzees in the Gombe National Park, Tanzania." Journal Of Reproduction and Fertility. Supplement, 28, 13–31.
  • Smuts, B.B., Cheney, D.L. Seyfarth, R.M., Wrangham, R.W., & Struhsaker, T.T. (Eds.) (1987). Primate Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-76715-9
  • Wrangham, R., Conklin, N. L., Chapman, C. A. and Hunt, K. D. (1991). "The significance of fibrous foods for Kibale Forest chimpanzees." Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society Of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 334(1270), 171–178.
  • Wrangham, R. (1993). "The evolution of sexuality in chimpanzees and bonobos." Human Nature, 4(1), 47–79.
  • Wrangham, R. and Peterson, D. (1996). Demonic males. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9780395877432.
  • Wrangham, R. (1997). Subtle, secret female chimpanzees. Science, 277(5327), 774–775.
  • Wrangham, R. (1999). "Is military incompetence adaptive?" Evolution and Human Behavior, 20(1), 3–17.
  • Wrangham, R., Jones, J. H., Laden, G., Pilbeam, D. and Conklin-Brittain, N. L. (1999). "The raw and the stolen: Cooking and the ecology of human origins." Current Anthropology, 40(5), 567–594.
  • Wrangham, R. (2009). Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Basic Books, 2009. ISBN 0465013627
  • Eds. Muller, M. & Wrangham, R. (2009). 'Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans'. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Notes

  1. ^ Kibale Chimpanzee Project
  2. ^ a b Gerber, Suzanne. "Not just monkeying around", Vegetarian Times, November 1998.
  3. ^ "Animal instinct for finding treatment." The New Zealand Herald, 6 August 2005.
  4. ^ Mowat, Farley (1987). Woman In the Mists. New York: Warner Books. pp. 172–3. ISBN 0446513601. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. ^ Wrangham R, Conklin-Brittain N. (2003 Sep). "Cooking as a biological trait" (PDF). Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 136 (1): 35–46. doi:10.1016/S1095-6433(03)00020-5. PMID 14527628. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  6. ^ Wrangham, Richard (2006). "The Cooking Enigma". In Ungar, Peter S. (ed.). Evolution of the Human Diet: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. Oxford, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 308–23. ISBN 0195183460. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |chapterurl= (help)
  7. ^ http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains
  8. ^ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains in Scientific American
  9. ^ http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pennisi_99.html
  10. ^ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains
  11. ^ Pennisi, Elizabeth (March 26, 1999). "Human evolution: Did Cooked Tubers Spur the Evolution of Big Brains?". Science. 283 (5410): 2004–2005. doi:10.1126/science.283.5410.2004. PMID 10206901.
  12. ^ http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0100-84551997000100023&script=sci_arttext

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