Carel van Schaik is a professor and director of the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. His book Among Orangutans: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture tells the story of his discovery of a group of orangutans in northern Sumatra and the challenge their tool use and sociality pose to theories of primatology and the insights they offer into key moments in human evolution. The University of Zurich (in German: Universität Zürich) is the largest university of Switzerland, in the city of Zurich. ... Type Species Simia pygmaeus Linnaeus, 1760 Species Pongo pygmaeus Pongo abelii Orangutans (also spelled orang utan, orang-utan, sometimes incorrectly orangutang) are two species of great apes with long arms and reddish, sometimes brown, hair native to Malaysia and Indonesia. ... Sumatra (also spelled Sumatara and Sumatera) is the sixth largest island of the world (approximately 470,000 km²) and is the largest part of Indonesia. ... Human evolution is the process of change and development, or evolution, by which human beings emerged as a distinct species. ...

Selected publications

• van Schaik, C. P. (1982). Why are diurnal primates living in groups? Behaviour, 87, 120-144.
• van Schaik, C. P., Deaner, R. O. and Merrill, M. Y. (1999). The conditions for tool use in primates: implications for the evolution of material culture. Journal of Human Evolution, 36(6), 719-741.
• van Schaik, C. P. and Dunbar, R. I. (1990). The evolution of monogamy in large primates: A new hypothesis and some crucial tests. Behaviour, 115(1-2), 30-62.
• van Schaik, C. P. and Kappeler, P. M. (1996). The social systems of gregarious lemurs: Lack of convergence with anthropoids due to evolutionary disequilibrium? Ethology Formerly Zeitschrift fuer Tierpsychologie, 102(11), 915-941.
• van Schaik, C. P. and Kappeler, P. M. (1997). Infanticide risk and the evolution of male-female association in primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences, 264(1388), 1687-1694.
• van Schaik, C. P. and van Noordwijk, M. A. (1985). Evolutionary effect of the absence of felids on the social organization of the macaques on the island of Simeulue ( Macaca fascicularis fusca, Miller 1903). Folia Primatologica, 44(3-4), 138-147.
• van Schaik, C. P., Van Noordwijk, M. A., Warsono, B. and Sutriono, E. (1983). Party size and early detection of predators in Sumatran forest primates. Primates, 24(2), 211-221.

External links

• Great Ape Culture - an NPR discussion
• Why not all orangutans are alike