Robert Seyfarth

Robert M. Seyfarth (born February 16, 1948) 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 fieldwork 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.

Background and career Robert M. Seyfarth was born on February 16, 1948. He grew up in Chicago but enjoyed fishing trips with his father to Canada and the Caribbean. During his senior year at Phillips Exeter Academy, he became interested in science after taking a course on Darwin. In 1970, he graduated from the honors program in biological anthropology at Harvard College. Fascinated by wild primates, Seyfarth then applied to work at Cambridge University with Robert Hinde, who had been the thesis advisor of Jane Goodall. Having been accepted by Hinde, Seyfarth then spent two years (1972–1974) in the field studying baboons in Mountain Zebra National Park in South Africa, together with Dorothy Cheney, whom he had recently married.

Research Vervet monkey (Kenya)Seyfarth's research and publications were largely based on long-term 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. Their book How Monkeys See the World (1990) summarized this research. 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 healthy 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."

Honors Seyfarth was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences awarded its 2010 Cozzarelli Prize, for the best article in the area of Behavioral and Social Sciences, to a paper about baboon collaboration coauthored by Cheney and Seyfarth.

Representative publications Cheney, D.L. & Seyfarth, R.M. (1990) How Monkeys See The World: Inside The Mind of Another Species. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cheney, D.L. & Seyfarth, R.M. (2007) Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smuts, B., Cheney, D., Seyfarth, R., Wrangham, R. & Struhsaker, T. (1987) Primate Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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