Barbara Smuts

Barbara B. Smuts is an American anthropologist and psychologist noted for her research into baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees.[1]

Research

Much of Smuts’ research concerns the development of social relationships between animals, particularly among chimpanzee and baboon populations. Smuts began studies of wild baboons in 1976.[2] Studies she made of wild olive baboons in Tanzania and Kenya inspired her 1985 book Sex and Friendship in Baboons. The book, the fruit of two years' research, showed how two different groups of the same primate interact with each other socially. She determined that friendship was a critical predictor of sexual activity between male and female baboons: females preferred to mate with males that had previously engaged in friendly interactions with them and could interact with their other offspring as well.[3]

Smuts also carried out research into bottlenose dolphin social development, working extensively with Janet Mann.[4]

Smuts' more recent research at the University of Michigan has focused on social behavior among dogs.[5]

Publications

References

  1. Goodall, Jane (2001). Dale Peterson, ed. Jane Goodall-Beyond Innocence: An Autobiography in Letters, the later years. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 146–147. ISBN 0-618-12520-5. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
  2. Smuts, B.B. (2009. First printing 1985). "Sex and Friendship in Baboons". New York: Aldine Publishing Co: 5. ISBN 978-0-202-02027-3. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. Smuts, Barbara B (1985). Sex and Friendship in Baboons. Aldine. ISBN 0-202-02027-4.
  4. Mann, Janet; Barbara Smuts (1999). "Behavioral development in wild bottlenose dolphin newborns (Tursiops sp.)". Behavior. Netherlands: E J Brill. 136 (5): 529–566. doi:10.1163/156853999501469. ISSN 0005-7959.
  5. Barbara Smuts research profile at UMich.edu

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Barbara Smuts


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.