Getting to know ‘hippie apes’ through Martin Surbeck
Growing up, Martin Surbeck knew he wanted a career that involved working with animals, but didn’t imagine he’d go to the African rainforest to do it. During college he conducted research on social insects and birds, but at graduation he got an unusual offer: to establish a bonobo research site in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and habituate the animals to the presence of researchers. And that set him on the path to his current career. “These animals are fascinating to watch, and they’re interesting because we don’t know that much about them,” Surbeck said. “So I spent a year in the Congo, habituating bonobos to humans.” Surbeck, who joined the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology as an assistant professor earlier this year, said while little was known about bonobos when he began, his work has done much to fill in those blanks. Often seen as less aggressive and more sexually active than...