Isabelle Laumer

Dr. Isabelle Laumer is a Cognitive Biologist and Primatologist conducting postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior since 2022. With over a decade of experience studying great apes and parrots, she has worked at prestigious institutions including the University of Vienna, Max-Planck-Institute for Anthropology, and University of California Los Angeles.

• Current research: Exploration behavior in primates, cognitive performance-curiosity interplay
• Key techniques: Behavioral observation, touchscreen experiments, pupillometry, thermal imaging
• Special focus: Evolution of humor and playful teasing in great apes

Her research spans physical cognition (tool-use, innovation, decision-making) and social cognition (prosociality, inequity aversion, theory of mind). She has made groundbreaking discoveries in self-medication behavior in orangutans and comparative studies of human infant teasing vs. ape behavior. Her work has been recognized with the uni:docs fellowship during her PhD at the University of Vienna.

Dr. Laumer has supervised graduate researchers and contributed to field experiments assessing curiosity development across species. Current projects investigate cognitive evolution through comparative studies of wild/human populations, with implications for understanding human evolutionary trajectories.