Barbara Smuts

Barbara B. Smuts is an American anthropologist and psychologist noted for her research into baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees.

Smuts received a Bachelors Degree in Anthropology from Harvard University and a Ph.D in neurological and biological behavioral science from Stanford Medical School. In the 1970s she began studying animal behaviour at the University of Michigan, including research with Jane Goodall on chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, where she had a violent introduction to field research, being among four field researchers kidnapped and beaten by a Marxist revolutionary group.

Much of Smuts’ research concerns the development of social relationships between animals, particularly among chimpanzee and baboon populations. Smuts began studies of wild baboons in 1976. Studies she made of wild olive baboons in Tanzania and Kenya inspired her 1985 book Sex and Friendship in Baboons. The book, the fruit of two years' research, showed how two different groups of the same primate interact with each other socially. She determined that friendship was a critical predictor of sexual activity between male and female baboons: females preferred to mate with males that had previously engaged in friendly interactions with them and could interact with their other offspring as well.

Smuts also carried out research into bottlenose dolphin social development, working extensively with Janet Mann.

Smuts' more recent research at the University of Michigan has focused on social behavior among dogs.

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