Primates teach us about society

A Swiss primatologist who arrived at The University of Western Australia in April to work in the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology probably won’t mind too much if his students start ‘monkeying around’ occasionally in class.

Assistant Professor Cyril Grueter is used to it, having spent almost two years in Yunnan - a remote mountainous region of China - studying a group of 400 black and white snub-nosed monkeys.

The monkeys - never seen outside China - live in similar social groups to humans and Assistant Professor Grueter observed them in their wild state to investigate the evolutionary pathways that lead to our multilevel societies.  His study was recently published in the International Journal of Primatology.