Alecia Carter

I've always wanted to know why animals do what they do. And the more time I've spent with wild baboons in Namibia, the more I've wanted to know what animals are thinking when they do what they do.

I started this journey doing an undergraduate degree in Zoology at the University of Queensland in Australia. I researched the behaviour of an invasive species of fish, and our native kangaroos. For my PhD, I moved to the Australian National University to start studying wild baboon behaviour in Namibia, at the Tsaobis Baboon Project. Since then, I've never really left the baboons! I had a brief affair with another species as a postdoctoral researcher in Cambridge, UK, but came back to the baboons as a Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. I continued researching baboon behaviour as a Research Scientist with the CNRS at the University of Montpellier, France, and then moved my family back to the UK to take up a lectureship in Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London, where I am now.

Since witnessing an orphaned infant baboon being carried by her group mates, both before and after her death, I've wanted to know what compels baboons (and other primates) to perform this behaviour. This has lead me more to the cognitive side of understanding animal behaviour, and my research questions now combine evolutionary and cognitive questions.

February 2022