The Life Scientific

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The Life Scientific: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy on human evolution and parenthood

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy on human evolution and parenthood

BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy on human evolution and parenthood

Jim Al-Khalili discusses monkey infanticide and human parenting with Sarah Hrdy.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to anthropologist Sarah Hrdy about monkey infanticide, sexual selection and human parenting strategies, from her perspective as a scientist and a mother.

Our primate cousins fascinate us, with their uncanny similarities to us. And studying other apes and monkeys also helps us figure out the evolutionary puzzle of what makes us uniquely human. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s work brings a female perspective to this puzzle, correcting sexist stereotypes like the aggressive, philandering male and the coy, passive female.

Sarah is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and studies female primate behaviour to create a richer picture of our evolutionary history, as well as what it means to be a woman or a parent today.
 
Her overarching aim is to understand the human condition, a goal she initially planned to pursue by writing novels. Instead, she found her way into science: her groundbreaking study of infanticide among langur monkeys in northern India overturned assumptions about these monkeys’ murderous motivations.

Later in her career, she looked into reproductive and parenting strategies across species. We humans are primed by evolution, she believes, to need a lot of support raising our children. And that’s a concern she found reflected in her own life, juggling family commitments with her career ambitions as a field researcher, teacher, and science writer.

Produced by Cathy Edwards.

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Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future

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