page_title: Robert Seyfarth (scientist)
section_title: Research
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Seyfarth (scientist) / Research
caption_attribution_description: Vervet Monkey, or just Vervet Chlorocebus pygerythrus August 2008 Lake Nakuru, Kenya 690V2354
context_page_description: Robert M. Seyfarth is an American primatologist and author. With his wife and collaborator Dorothy L. Cheney, he spent years studying the social behavior, communication, and cognition of wild primates in their natural habitat, including more than a decade of field work with baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Seyfarth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement, is a member of both the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
context_section_description: Seyfarth's research and publications were largely based on longterm field studies of primates in the natural habitat, usually in partnership with Cheney. From 1977 to 1988, Seyfarth and Cheney studied the behavior and ecology of vervet monkeys, in Kenya's Amboseli National Park. This research was summarized in their book How Monkeys See the World (1990). They showed that the alarm calls of vervet monkeys have specific semantic content, so that playing back a recording of one type of call makes monkeys look up in the sky for eagles, while playing back a different call makes monkeys scan the bushes for a snake. According to the Newsletter of the Animal Behavior Society, "These results were the first strong evidence that non-human vertebrates use signals to refer to things external to themselves, and as such revolutionized our understanding of the cognitive side of animal communication."
  From 1992 to 2008, Seyfarth and Cheney studied vocal communication and social structure of chacma baboons, at the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana. This research was summarized in their book Baboon Metaphysics (2007). Seyfarth and Cheney studied baboon vocalizations, social relationships, and social cognition, with a particular interest in factors that contribute to baboon fitness. Their research showed that baboons are acutely aware of hierarchies and relationships in the group they belong to. Baboon mothers who build good relationships with other adults greatly increase the chance of their offspring's survival. According to Seyfarth, the rules for successful baboons are, "like [those] in a Jane Austen novel, be nice to your relatives and get in with the high-ranking relatives".
  The Animal Behavior Society has described Seyfarth and Cheney as "pre-eminent leaders not just in primate communication but in the field of animal communication as a whole."
caption: Vervet monkey (Kenya)
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