John Mitani
University of Michigan Professor
John Mitani is the James N. Spuhler Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan. He is an animal behaviorist who studies the behavior of our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates. During the past 40 years, he has conducted fieldwork with all five apes in the world today: gibbons and orangutans in Indonesia, bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, chimpanzees in Tanzania and Uganda, and gorillas in Rwanda. His current research involves a long-term study of an unusually large community of chimpanzees at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda. Mitani has served as an Editor and on the Editorial Boards of Advances in the Study of Behavior, the American Journal of Primatology, Animal Behaviour, the International Journal of Primatology, the Journal of Human Evolution, and Primates. He is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and recipient of a United States National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellowship.