Our species is capable of the most violent acts ever recorded in nature. However, we are also able to resolve our conflicts and restore peaceful relations, and this allows us to live in complex societies. To explore the evolutionary roots of this ability, an Italian-Ethiopian team led by Professor Elisabetta Palagi of the University of Pisa will study gelada monkeys as a model species for conflict resolution, a topic never explored before. The project entitled "Science for reconciliation: What an Ethiopian monkey tells us about peace-making" is the only Italian one of the 24 financed by the Leakey Foundation, an institution born in 1968 with the aim of increasing the knowledge and understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival.
The team of the University of Pisa in collaboration with the group of Professor Bezawork Afework of Addis Ababa University will work in an unprotected area around Debre Libanos in Ethiopia to collect behavioral and genetic data on the gelada, an Ethiopian endemic primate species that lives in complex societies with groups associating at different hierarchical levels. This social structure, similar to ours, makes the gelada a good model for studying the natural resolution of conflicts within and between groups.
"We want to investigate the multimodal communication tactics used during intergroup conflicts and the subjective tendency to implement cooperative and remedial behaviors based on kinship, gender, hierarchical rank - explains Elisabetta Palagi - the goal is ambitious and we hope to be able to achieve it also through the set up of a long-term research team composed of Ethiopian and Italian scholars. From this point of view, the general purpose of the project also goes beyond scientific results, aiming to build a real cooperative platform involving an African and a European country".