Dawn Prince-Hughes

Dawn Prince-Hughes (born January 31, 1964 in Carbondale, Illinois) is an anthropologist, primatologist, and ethologist who received her M.A. and PhD in interdisciplinary anthropology from the Universität Herisau in Switzerland. In 2000 she was appointed an adjunct professor at Western Washington University. She is the executive chair of ApeNet Inc., has served as the executive director of the Institute for Cognitive Archaeological Research and is associated with the Jane Goodall Institute.

Prince-Hughes is the author of Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, Gorillas Among Us: A Primate Ethnographer's Book of Days, Expecting Teryk: An Exceptional Path to Parenthood, The Archetype of the Ape-man: The Phenomenological Archaeology of a Relic Hominid Ancestor, Adam, and the editor of Aquamarine Blue 5: Personal Stories of College Students with Autism. Her book, Passing As Human/Freak Nation: How I Discovered That No One Is Normal was released in December 2009 and Circus of Souls: How I Discovered We Are All Freaks Passing as Normal was published in 2013.

As a young adult, Prince-Hughes was employed at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. She watched how silverback male gorillas cared for their families and paternally intervened to resolve conflicts, thereby setting the tone for community behavior. She came to conclude anger often stems from embarrassment, and humor is a natural response to fear.

Prince-Hughes challenges the predominant scientific paradigm, which says the nature of mankind's cognitive processes is clearly distinct from that of other primates. She has formulated several contrarian scientific conclusions, including her assertion that Bonobo chimpanzees can speak English if one just learns to understand the accent.

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