Currently, there is one postdoctoral researcher, one PhD student, four unergraduate students of the department of Anthropology of the University of Zürich (in collaborations with the University of Leipzig, Germany and the University of Warwick, UK), Universitas Nasional, Jakarta, Indonesia and the Institute Pertanian Bogor (IPB), Indonesia, working at Suaq. Other researchers, PhD students and undergraduates are currently in Switzerland, analyzing the data they collected at Suaq.The topics of these projecs are:

  • Development of intelligence
  • Skill acquisition
  • Cultural transmsission
  • Feeding ecology
  • Cultural vocal repertoires

Immigrant orangutan males as cultural vectors & the evolution of tolerance vs. xenophobia

This study investigates the role of socially transmitted knowledge between local females and immigrant unflanged males.

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Male-female relationships – from friendship to coercion

This study aims at investigating and comparing male-female social interactions and association patterns of Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.

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Multimodal communication in orangutans: redundancy versus complementarity

This projects aims to investigate the function and ontogeny of multimodal communication in wild and captive orangutans.

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Nutritional ecology of the Sumatran orangutan at Suaq Balimbing

In this project, we investigate the nutritional composition of the food items of the Suaq orangutans.

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The development of cognition and curiosity in immature orangutans

With this project we investigate how differences in opportunities for social learning affect the cognivie development of immatures and later skill sets.

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