Julia R. Greenberg
Conservation Behavior & Physiology
My research prior to joining the Holekamp Lab focused on comparative cognition and primate behavior.
In the Carleton College Primate Cognition Lab, I worked with Dr. Julie Neiworth to conduct research on and care for cotton-top tamarins. Projects included studies of Gestalt processing, inequity aversion, tool use, and cooperation.
As a Fulbright Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, I collaborated with Dr. Michael Tomasello, Dr. Felix Warneken, and Katharina Hamman to test the cognitive abilities underlying cooperation and helping in chimpanzees. We compared the performance of chimpanzees to that of human children in similar tasks in order to examine these processes in an ontogenetic and evolutionary context.
As lab manager at the Lincoln Park Zoo's Regenstein Center for African Apes, I worked with Dr. Steve Ross and Dr. Elizabeth Lonsdorf to study chimpanzees and gorilla behavior, cognition, and husbandry . I conducted touch-screen cognition sessions, analyzed tool use behavior, analyzed space use to assess enclosures and welfare, and trained keepers and volunteers in behavioral monitoring.
In Costa Rica, I took field courses at La Selva Biological Station and La Suerte Biological Station on Tropical Rainforest Ecology and Primate Behavior.
Apparatuses used to test cooperation in children and chimpanzees
(Hamaan, Warneken, Greenberg, & Tomasello 2011).