Frans de Waal – Improbable Research

Sad news: Frans de Waal is gone

March 16, 2024 Marc Abrahams

Frans de Waal has died. Among his smaller accomplishments was winning an Ig Nobel Prize in 2012, with colleague Jennifer Pokorny, for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends. [The photo you see here shows them giving their acceptance speech at the Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard […]

Innovative Scientists Talk About Their Childhood (1): Frans de Waal’s Jackdaws

May 31, 2019 Marc Abrahams

Here’s Frans de Waal talking about some jackdaws that, when Frans was a child, excited him in a way that led to his eventual unusual career. Frans studies chimps, bonobos, macaques, capuchin monkeys, and other of our close relatives. He wants to understand how and why they (and we) do some of the impressive things […]