Primate Palate: Orangutans, Obesity, and Human Evolution
How can studying what orangutans eat help us better understand the obesity epidemic in humans? Dr. Erin Vogel shares her research on wild orangutans in the tropical forests of Sumatra and Borneo, illuminating how their diet, behavior, and metabolism can provide insights into the human condition.
From the Field: Dorothée Drucker
My work takes place in the lab where bone samples are prepared for isotopic analysis. To reconstruct diet, carbon-13 and nitrogen-15 are measured to establish the origin of the dietary proteins. Collagen, the main protein in bone, is extracted from the bone sample after several steps of cleaning and purification.
Feeding Transitions in Wild Infant Chimpanzees
Iulia Badescu was awarded a Leakey Foundation Research Grant during our spring 2015 cycle for her project entitled "Investigating the infant nutritional development of wild chimpanzees." She was recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and she was kind enough to summarize the article for our Leakey Foundation Blog.
Upper Paleolithic Dietary Strategies
When fluctuating climates in the Ice Age altered habitats, modern humans may have adapted their diets in a different way than Neanderthals, according to a study funded in part by The Leakey Foundation and published on April 27, 2016, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE .
Fossilized human molar used in a study of dietary habits of Neanderthals and Upper
Grantee Spotlight: Julie Lesnik
Julie Lesnik was awarded a Leakey Foundation Research Grant during our fall 2015 cycle for her project entitled "An evaluation of termite-associated hydrocarbon signatures as an influence on prey selectivity and an ecological signal for chimpanzees and Olduvai hominins."