PYI: Social Behavior in Apes and Dolphins

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This action is to recommend a Presidential Young Investigator Award for Dr. Barbara Smuts. Dr. Smuts has embarked on an outstanding career in which her research spans at least two major disciplines, anthropology and psychobiology. Her field research on social relationships in baboons has invigorated and brought methodological discipline to the study of free-living non-human primates. This work has been extremely quantitative and sheds light on the study of human social relationships as well as illuminating evolutionary perspectives on the functional significance of social interactions. Her current research investigates the evolutionary relationship between complex social organization and the intelligence through comparisons of social cognition in chimpanzees and dolphins. Because humans and apes on the one hand, and the toothed whales on the other, have evolved large brains and complex societies independently, a comparative study should provide insights that cannot be obtained by studying either group on its own. Dr. Smuts is at the forefront of quantitative research involving social relationships and her work will undoubtedly change the way we view patterns of friendship, alliance, and cooperation, the existence of long term affiliations of male and female outside the mating context, and the import and nature of male-infant relationships.