Alex Mielke: "The Natural History of Jealousy"

Dr Alex Mielke is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Tai Chimpanzee Project, studying the cognitive mechanisms enabling primates to cooperate and navigate their everyday social encounters. By comparing how predictable the social interactions and relationships are of two primate species, sooty mangabeys and Western chimpanzees living in the Tai National Park in Cote D'Ivoire, he tries to understand where the need for complex cognitive skill arises. He investigates how social context influences how individuals decide when, how, and with whom to cooperate towards a common goal, using both direct observations and snake models as experimental stimuli.