Bas van Boekholt
monkeyologist.bsky.social
Bas van Boekholt
@monkeyologist.bsky.social
Pinned
New Paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! 🎉 Sequence organization of mother–infant interactions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild. See the thread below for a quick explanation, and check out the paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Sequence organization of mother–infant interactions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Sequence organization is a fundamental feature of human communication, shaping our interactions. This organization underlies interactions with and without language, appears early in human development ...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Reposted by Bas van Boekholt
🚨New animal linguistics paper🚨

Together with @geoffreymesbahi.bsky.social and @maelmleroux.bsky.social, we tried to finally answer this question: Do titi monkeys have complex syntactic skills?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
The As and Bs of titi monkey linguistics: why emotional communication is not the enemy
The alarm call sequences of titi monkeys (genera Plecturocebus, Callicebus and Cheracebus) have sparked important debates over whether they exhibit parallels with human language. Some researchers con...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
January 21, 2026 at 12:31 PM
Amazing work of my colleague Jolinde for wrangling all the data and making some stunning figures in the process! +
interesting results as well!
My first PhD paper is published! 🎉 We compared how wild bonobo and chimpanzee infants (0-5.5y) become independent from their mothers. Here is the open-access link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

🧵(1/5)
Great Ape Childhoods: Social and Spatial Pathways to Independence in Bonobo and Chimpanzee Infants
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 16, 2025 at 1:47 PM
New Paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! 🎉 Sequence organization of mother–infant interactions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild. See the thread below for a quick explanation, and check out the paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Sequence organization of mother–infant interactions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Sequence organization is a fundamental feature of human communication, shaping our interactions. This organization underlies interactions with and without language, appears early in human development ...
royalsocietypublishing.org
November 26, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Bas van Boekholt
I am looking for an intern to support my PhD project on multimodal communication in common marmosets! 🐒🌞
Minimum commitment is 3 months full-time. Please note that this is an unpaid position and that remote options are not available. BSc and MSc students are welcome!🥰
@nccrlanguage.bsky.social
November 17, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by Bas van Boekholt
🚨New in @science.org🚨
With Simon Townsend (@nccrlanguage.bsky.social) and Martin Surbeck, we have investigated whether wild bonobos can combine calls in complex combinations, similar to how humans combine words into sentences 🧪
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#ScienceResearch #AnimalCommunication
Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos
Compositionality, the capacity to combine meaningful elements into larger meaningful structures, is a hallmark of human language. Compositionality can be trivial (the combination’s meaning is the sum ...
www.science.org
April 4, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Reposted by Bas van Boekholt
And... We are up and running!

We are thrilled to announce the creation of the Ethics, Diversity and Inclusivity group of the EFP! 🥳

We aim to discuss and implement short-, medium- and long-term actions to mediate EDI issues in primatology. If you want to join, email us at edi4efp(at)gmail.com!
December 4, 2024 at 10:54 AM