“Baboons live lives and experience environmental change very much as humans, so this gives us a model for adaptations to changing environments”

After receiving the 15th BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology, Jeanne Altmann reflects in this interview on how her innovative methodologies for studying animal behavior transformed modern primatology. Through systematic observations and rigorous analysis, Altmann opened new paths to understanding how social, environmental, and maternal factors shape the lives of primates. Her testimony highlights the importance of grounding behavioral research in direct evidence and field experience, shedding light on key processes in the evolution of behavior.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology has gone in this fifteenth edition to Susan C. Alberts, Jeanne Altmann and Marlene Zuk “for their outstanding contributions to the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of animals,” in the words of the award citation.