Mathieu Malherbe

Email: malherbe@isc.cnrs.fr

Mathieu Malherbe, formally the camp manager at the Tai Chimpanzee Project, Ivory Coast, is currently a PhD student working under the supervision of Roman Wittig and Catherine Crockford in the Ape Social Mind Lab, CNRS and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, in collaboration with the Tai Chimpanzee Project. His work has a primary focus on chimpanzees culture. Culture has historically been defined as knowledge and behavior that depends upon the capacity for it to be learnt and transmitted to succeeding generations and Mathieu’s research aims at bringing more knowledge on material and social culture. In an evolutionary perspective, studying material culture in chimpanzees gives the opportunity to understand the path leading to the use of tools in hominids. Using behavioral observations and video footage, Mathieu investigates behavioral variation between four habituated neighboring communities of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Tai National Park, Ivory Coast.