Richard Wrangham
Biographic Data
| ID | 626901 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Wrangham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Wrangham |
| SIGNATURE | WRANGHAM R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 425 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The evolutionary roots of war and peace
International audience
Wood and meat as complementary sources of sodium for Kanyawara chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes )
OBJECTIVES: Sodium, a vital micronutrient that is often in scarce supply for tropical herbivores, is sometimes found at high concentration in decaying wood. We tested two hypotheses for chimpanzees: first, that wood-eating facilitates acquisition of sodium; second, that wood-eating occurs in response to the low availability of sodium from other dietary sources. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied the behavior of more than 50 chimpanzees of all age-…
Robert Hinde
Screening wild and semi‐free ranging great apes for putative sexually transmitted diseases: Evidence of Trichomonadidae infections
First published: 26 June 2015 DOI: 10.1002/ajp.22442 In Rushmore et al., there was an error that affected the phylogenetic analysis presented in Figure 2. Below is a corrected version of Figure 2, which includes sequences from fecal and urine samples obtained from chimpanzees in our study and other related parasites (with Genbank accession numbers). Full-length (250 ±1 nt) Illumina reads from fecal samples were paired by name and merged using Gen…
Self-Interest and the Design of Rules
Control of Fire in the Paleolithic: Evaluating the Cooking Hypothesis
According to current evidence, Homo sapiens was unable to survive on a diet of raw wild foods. Because cooked diets have large physiological and behavioral consequences, a critical question for understanding human evolution is when the adaptive obligation to use fire developed. Archaeological evidence of fire use is scarce before ca. 400 ka, which suggests to some that the commitment to fire must have arisen in the mid-Pleistocene or later. Howev…
Influences of the Control of Fire on the Energy Value and Composition of the Human Diet
Cooking is unique to our species and a human universal, but until recently little has been known about its nutritional significance. This chapter reviews evidence that cooking predictably increases the net energy gained from food. The control of fire would therefore have supported rising energy budgets and novel adaptations, including reductions in digestive structures. Dietary composition would have been affected in two opposing ways. The contro…
Screening wild and semi‐free ranging great apes for putative sexually transmitted diseases: Evidence of Trichomonadidae infections
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can persist endemically, are known to cause sterility and infant mortality in humans, and could have similar impacts in wildlife populations. African apes (i.e., chimpanzees, bonobos, and to a lesser extent gorillas) show multi-male mating behavior that could offer opportunities for STD transmission, yet little is known about the prevalence and impact of STDs in this endangered primate group. We used serology …
Dental eruption in East African wild chimpanzees
The self-domestication hypothesis: Evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression
T. Nishida, K. Zamma, T. Matsusaka, A. Inaba, W.C. McGrew: Chimpanzee Behavior in the Wild: An Audio-Visual Encyclopedia: Springer, Tokyo, 2010, 247 pp
Human adaptation to the control of fire
Charles Darwin attributed human evolutionary success to three traits. Our social habits and anatomy were important, he said, but the critical feature was our intelligence, because it led to so much else, including such traits as language, weapons, tools, boats, and the control of fire. Among these, he opined, the control of fire was “probably the greatest ever [discovery] made by man, excepting language.” Despite this early suggestion that the co…
No evidence of short-term exchange of meat for sex among chimpanzees
Automated classification of starch granules using supervised pattern recognition of morphological properties
Shallow‐water habitats as sources of fallback foods for hominins
Underground storage organs (USOs) have been proposed as critical fallback foods for early hominins in savanna, but there has been little discussion as to which habitats would have been important sources of USOs. USOs consumed by hominins could have included both underwater and underground storage organs, i.e., from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Shallow aquatic habitats tend to offer high plant growth rates, high USO densities, and relati…
Starch granules, dental calculus and new perspectives on ancient diet
The International Primatological Society as a Coalition: Primatologists and the Future of Primates
Great apes prefer cooked food
The Cooking Enigma
This chapter considers the role of cooking in the evolution of human diet. People in every culture know how to make fire, and everywhere they use it to improve their food (Tylor, 1878; Gott, 2002; Wrangham and Conklin-Brittain, 2003; fig. 16.1). But “no beast is a cook,” as Boswell (1773) asserted. This difference between humans and other animals has long been appreciated, and some have even used it to define us: Boswell (1773) called humans the …
Toshisada Nishida’s contributions to primatology
Soils Consumed by Chimpanzees of the Kanyawara Community in the Kibale Forest, Uganda
The rise of the hominids as an adaptive shift in fallback foods: Plant underground storage organs (USOs) and australopith origins
Human Kinship: A Continuation of Politics by Other Means?
Our aim in this chapter is to describe and analyze the most common patterns of human kinship. In the anthropological literature, these patterns are often overshadowed by the enormous diversity of ethnographic cases. Human societies vary widely in the terms by which kin are classified, the rules that govern behavior toward kin in different categories, prohibitions on (or preferences for) marriage between kin, norms of residence, succession, and in…
Killer species
‘Cooking as a biological trait’
Control of Fire in the Paleolithic: Evaluating the Cooking Hypothesis
According to current evidence, Homo sapiens was unable to survive on a diet of raw wild foods. Because cooked diets have large physiological and behavioral consequences, a critical question for understanding human evolution is when the adaptive obligation to use fire developed. Archaeological evidence of fire use is scarce before ca. 400 ka, which suggests to some that the commitment to fire must have arisen in the mid-Pleistocene or later. Howev…
The rise of the hominids as an adaptive shift in fallback foods: Plant underground storage organs (USOs) and australopith origins
Mortality rates among wild chimpanzees
On the evolution of Ape Social Systems
Starch granules, dental calculus and new perspectives on ancient diet
Shallow‐water habitats as sources of fallback foods for hominins
Underground storage organs (USOs) have been proposed as critical fallback foods for early hominins in savanna, but there has been little discussion as to which habitats would have been important sources of USOs. USOs consumed by hominins could have included both underwater and underground storage organs, i.e., from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Shallow aquatic habitats tend to offer high plant growth rates, high USO densities, and relati…
Dental eruption in East African wild chimpanzees
Self-Interest and the Design of Rules
Automated classification of starch granules using supervised pattern recognition of morphological properties
No evidence of short-term exchange of meat for sex among chimpanzees
Great apes prefer cooked food
Soils Consumed by Chimpanzees of the Kanyawara Community in the Kibale Forest, Uganda
Killer species
Wood and meat as complementary sources of sodium for Kanyawara chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes )
OBJECTIVES: Sodium, a vital micronutrient that is often in scarce supply for tropical herbivores, is sometimes found at high concentration in decaying wood. We tested two hypotheses for chimpanzees: first, that wood-eating facilitates acquisition of sodium; second, that wood-eating occurs in response to the low availability of sodium from other dietary sources. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied the behavior of more than 50 chimpanzees of all age-…
On the evolution of Ape Social Systems
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence
Whatever their virtues, men are more violent than women. Why do men kill, rape, and wage war, and what can we do about it? Drawing on the latest discoveries about human evolution and about our closest living relatives, the great apes, Demonic Males offers startling new answers to these questions. Dramatic, vivid, and sometimes shocking, but firmly grounded in meticulous scientific research, Demonic Males will stir controversy and debate. It will …
Analysis of geophagy soils in Kibale Forest, Uganda
Temporal patterns of crop‐raiding by primates: Linking food availability in croplands and adjacent forest
Primates dominate lists of pests that damage crops around African parks and reserves. Beyond creating management problems, crop foraging is integral to the ecology of primates inhabiting forest—agriculture ecotones. Twenty‐three months of data from four villages around Kibale National Park, Uganda, revealed that redtail monkeys Cercopithecus ascanius , olive baboons Papio cynocephalus and chimpanzees Pan troglodytes selected different crops or pl…
Is Military Incompetence Adaptive?
Recognizing hominoid‐modified bones: The taphonomy of colobus bones partially digested by free‐ranging chimpanzees in the Kibale Forest, Uganda
Recognizing hominoid-modified bones: The taphonomy of colobus bones partially digested by free-ranging chimpanzees in the Kibale Forest, Uganda
We present a taphonomic study of bones that have passed though the digestive tracts of free-ranging chimpanzees from the Kibale Forest in Uganda. The bone assemblage can be characterized as having a very low species diversity; low number of identifiable specimens (NISP) per scat; bones extremely broken up (very small size range); skeletal part frequencies similar in some ways to those resulting from carnivore partial digestion; and sometimes arti…
Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us about Human Social Evolution
How did we become the linguistic, cultured, and successful apes we are? Our closest relatives offer tantalizing clues. In this volume top primate experts read these clues and compose an extensive picture of what the behaviour of monkeys and apes can tellus about our own evolution as a species
Mortality rates among wild chimpanzees
‘Cooking as a biological trait’
Human Kinship: A Continuation of Politics by Other Means?
Our aim in this chapter is to describe and analyze the most common patterns of human kinship. In the anthropological literature, these patterns are often overshadowed by the enormous diversity of ethnographic cases. Human societies vary widely in the terms by which kin are classified, the rules that govern behavior toward kin in different categories, prohibitions on (or preferences for) marriage between kin, norms of residence, succession, and in…
Killer species
Soils Consumed by Chimpanzees of the Kanyawara Community in the Kibale Forest, Uganda
The rise of the hominids as an adaptive shift in fallback foods: Plant underground storage organs (USOs) and australopith origins
The Cooking Enigma
This chapter considers the role of cooking in the evolution of human diet. People in every culture know how to make fire, and everywhere they use it to improve their food (Tylor, 1878; Gott, 2002; Wrangham and Conklin-Brittain, 2003; fig. 16.1). But “no beast is a cook,” as Boswell (1773) asserted. This difference between humans and other animals has long been appreciated, and some have even used it to define us: Boswell (1773) called humans the …
Toshisada Nishida’s contributions to primatology
Starch granules, dental calculus and new perspectives on ancient diet
The International Primatological Society as a Coalition: Primatologists and the Future of Primates
Great apes prefer cooked food
Automated classification of starch granules using supervised pattern recognition of morphological properties
Shallow‐water habitats as sources of fallback foods for hominins
Underground storage organs (USOs) have been proposed as critical fallback foods for early hominins in savanna, but there has been little discussion as to which habitats would have been important sources of USOs. USOs consumed by hominins could have included both underwater and underground storage organs, i.e., from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Shallow aquatic habitats tend to offer high plant growth rates, high USO densities, and relati…
Human adaptation to the control of fire
Charles Darwin attributed human evolutionary success to three traits. Our social habits and anatomy were important, he said, but the critical feature was our intelligence, because it led to so much else, including such traits as language, weapons, tools, boats, and the control of fire. Among these, he opined, the control of fire was “probably the greatest ever [discovery] made by man, excepting language.” Despite this early suggestion that the co…
No evidence of short-term exchange of meat for sex among chimpanzees
T. Nishida, K. Zamma, T. Matsusaka, A. Inaba, W.C. McGrew: Chimpanzee Behavior in the Wild: An Audio-Visual Encyclopedia: Springer, Tokyo, 2010, 247 pp
The self-domestication hypothesis: Evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression
Biology (26 works) · Primate Behavior and Ecology (21 works) · Ecology (12 works) · Ecology (11 works) · Zoology (10 works) · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Animal Behavior and Reproduction (5 works)