Faces of ESLR: Zoe Goldsborough
I am a behavioral ecologist interested in a wide range of topics related to animal behavior and cognition, including culture, communication, and individual differences. I believe animal welfare is central to any study of animal behavior, and my research aims to further our understanding of animals’ experiences and behavior with the goal of contributing to their positive treatment. During my MSc in Animal Ecology at Utrecht University (NL), I looked at qualitative individual variation in abnormal behavior in a group of captive chimpanzees, which is often overlooked despite having great implications for accurately assessing welfare. Additionally, I described a consolatory response of this group of chimpanzees to a bereaved group member, who had experienced a stillbirth. Following the observation that an immigrant female chimpanzee adopted a group-specific way of locomoting, I developed a greater interest in social learning of behavior. During my following research project at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia, I studied how individual chimpanzees initiate a social custom, the grooming handclasp, and whether communication plays a role in the initiation. I am currently a first-year IMPRS doctoral student in the Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies at the MPI for Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz (Germany). In my PhD project I study stone tool-use by island-living white-faced capuchin monkeys. Through non-invasive methods such as camera traps, I aim to uncover why tool use arose in these groups of capuchins, when it has never been observed in other well-studied populations of the same genus. You can follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/GoldsboroughZoe) and check my website (https://zgoldsborough.wixsite.com/research) for updates on my research.
About the author
Zoë is a behavioral ecologist interested in a wide range of topics related to animal behavior and cognition, including culture, communication, and individual differences. During her MSc in Animal Ecology at Utrecht University (NL), she looked at qualitative individual variation in abnormal behavior in a group of captive chimpanzees. She did a research project at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia and studied how individual chimpanzees initiate a social custom, the grooming handclasp, and whether communication plays a role in the initiation. Currently she is a first-year IMPRS doctoral student in the Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies at the MPI for Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz (Germany) and studies stone tool-use by island-living white-faced capuchin monkeys.
You can follow her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/GoldsboroughZoe) and check her website (https://zgoldsborough.wixsite.com/research) for updates on her research.