Anna Nekaris: "The social and cognitive complexity of slow lorises and implications for translocations"

Professor Anna Nekaris is a Professor in Anthropology and Primate Conservation studying the unique group of evolutionary distinct primates known as the Asian lorises. Her studies cover all eleven species, including six she named or elevated from subspecies. Anna is the Course Tutor for the highly acclaimed MSc Primate Conservation, Director of the Little Fireface Project and Convenor of the Nocturnal Primate Research Group. She completed her BA in Anthropology at the University of Missouri Columbia, USA in 1993, followed by a Certificat d’Universite de Primatologie from the Universite de Louis Pasteur Strasbourg France in 1994 and her PhD in Anthropology at Washington University St Louis, USA in 2000. Anna’s research on lorises ranges from behavioural ecology in zoos, rescue centres and in the wild, museum studies, genetics, acoustics, taxonomy, conservation education and now a novel study of chemical ecology and how this bizarre primate is one of the only mammals that produces venom. Despite reports of this extraordinary phenomenon 40 years ago, virtually nothing is known about how slow lorises use venom. She has supervised more than 60 postgraduate students. Anna is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Folia Primatologica, the journal of the European Society of Primatology.

Professor in Anthropology and Course Leader, MSc Primate Conservation. Director of the Little Fireface Project and Convenor of the Nocturnal Primate Research Group, Oxford Brookes University.