Ian Gilby

IG> I grew up in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Living on the shore of a small lake and close to a state forest, I became interested in animals at an early age. I earned a B.A. in Biology from Carleton College, where I continued to develop a keen interest in biology and animal behavior. During my college years, I worked in a developmental biology laboratory, spent a summer radio-collaring and tracking Black Bears in North Carolina, and completed an internship at the New England Wildlife Center, a wildlife rehabilitation clinic in Massachusetts. After graduating from Carleton in 1996, I worked at the Wildlife Science Center, a wolf research and education facility in Forest Lake, Minnesota. I also worked as an administrative assistant for the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) at the Minnesota Zoo.

IG> In 1997, I started a Ph.D. program in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota.
    Unfortunately, with no ability to differentiate between them.  Ecology and "evolution" are amenable to study by science; however, human behavior is determined by cultural conditioning, NOT by Natural Laws.

IG> I study hunting and meat sharing among chimpanzees.
    Apparently our young PhD (candidate/professor?) did not comprehend that chimp flesh-eating is evidence of a primitive culture being developed among some chimps, and thus chimp flesh-eating is cultural, certainly NOT nutritionally mandated.  Similarly, our young scientist was also mal-programmed into the identical practice by ignorant parental units and the extant unhealthy, and self-destructive culture; worse, his educational experience also failed to give him any meaningful insight into the true nature of human nutritional imperatives.

IG> Many people don't know that in addition to fruit and leaves, chimpanzees also eat small mammals, including colobus monkeys, bush piglets and baby bushbuck.
    Worse, most people who do know this, simply do not comprehend the blatantly obvious fact that such behavior is programmed into the participating chimps by cultural conditioning of a sexually-manipulative nature.

IG> Jane Goodall first discovered this in 1960, yet even today, chimpanzees' meat eating habits are not fully understood.
    By whom?  I have no difficulty fully understanding cultural conditioning, peer pressure, and monkey-see-monkey-do behavior.

IG> Using 40+ years of behavioral data, I am trying to determine why the Gombe chimpanzees concentrate their hunting efforts in the dry season.
     Looking at the choices available during wet of dry seasons, it is quite obvious.  40 years, and the pattern is not obvious?

IG. When chimpanzees capture a monkey or piglet, they often share portions of the prey with other chimpanzees. Why do they share a carcass that they could eat by themselves?
    The evidence shows clearly that older males trade flesh to the females in exchange for sexual favors; exactly like human "dating".

IG. To research this question, I have completed four separate 3-month field seasons at Gombe. I use video to break down and analyze the complicated behavior that occurs during a meat-eating bout.
    I can't wait to see how IG> mindlessly projects his own cultural conditioning onto this data, to see only a reflection of himself, and be totally unaware of his own ego dictating his "results"!

     Ian received his Ph.D. in 2004 and is now working as a post-doctoral fellow in Anthropology at Harvard University and is still very involved in research involving the Gombe chimpanzees.
    Ah, anthro-apologists, who are oblivious of cultural processes; but, aren't they supposed to be studying culture?  A strange breed, indeed!

E-mail

ttdd

Home page