Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Tetsuro Matsuzawa is a former Director of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan. He is currently the Academic Advisor at Chubu Gakuin University, Japan, and an Invited Professor at Northwest University in Xi'an, China. Matsuzawa has studied chimpanzee intelligence both in the laboratory and in the wild. His laboratory work is known as the "Ai project". Since 1977, it has focused on language-like skills, the concept of number, and working memory. The participants include a 48-year-old female chimpanzee named Ai, her 25-year-old son named Ayumu, and others who live in a community of 11 chimpanzees, comprising three generations. The working memory of young chimpanzees may be superior to that of humans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktkjUjcZid0). The fact led him to the "Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis". In parallel with his efforts, Matsuzawa has also studied wild chimpanzees at Bossou and Nimba, Republic of Guinea, West Africa, since 1986. The Bossou chimpanzees are known to use a pair of stones as a hammer and an anvil to crack open oil-palm nuts. The long-term research revealed topics such as the 100% lateralization of handedness when using a stone hammer, the critical period for learning nut-cracking between the ages of 3 and 5, and the social learning process known as "Education by Master-Apprenticeship," as well as grand-mothering in chimpanzees, among others. Matsuzawa attempts to synthesize fieldwork and laboratory work to gain insight into the minds of chimpanzees, our evolutionary relatives. He has received several prizes, including the Purple Ribbon Medal of Honor, the Jane Goodall Award, and the Person of Cultural Merit award from Japan. He has published numerous articles and books, including "Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior" (Springer, 2001), "Cognitive Development in Chimpanzees" (Springer, 2006), "The Mind of the Chimpanzee" (Chicago University Press, 2010), and "Chimpanzees of Bossou and Nimba" (Springer, 2011).
