Wild Apes: Insights for Human Origins

Venue: Online Only

Wild apes provide critical comparative models for investigating the evolutionary origins of human behaviour, ecology, cognition, genetics and morphology. As our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans offer unique insights into the selective pressures and adaptive pathways that shaped human evolution. This symposium brings together researchers working across evolutionary anthropology, behavioural ecology, archaeology, and genetics to explore how studies of living apes, and other primates, in the wild continue to inform interpretations of the human fossil and archaeological record.

Topics will include tool use and material culture, locomotion and anatomy, social organisation, communication, life history, cognition, diet and responses to environmental change. Particular attention will be given to the diversity and flexibility of ape behaviour across ecological contexts, highlighting the importance of comparative evolutionary frameworks. 

At a time when all great apes face increasing threats from habitat loss, climate change, disease, and hunting, the symposium further emphasises the urgency of integrating conservation and evolutionary research. By examining both the similarities and differences between extant apes and humans, this symposium aims to advance interdisciplinary dialogue on what living apes can—and cannot—tell us about the evolution of our own lineage.