is a primatologist who was a past director of the

Primate Research Institute is a Japanese research center for the study of primates. It was founded in 1967 by primatologists Kinji Imanishi and Junichiro Itani. The institute works toward understanding the biological, behavioral and socioecological aspects of primates, and ...

of Kyoto University. He graduated from Kyoto University with a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree in 1974, a Psy.M. degree in 1976 and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree in Science in 1989. Matsuzawa is known for his

research Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

on chimpanzee

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...

both in the laboratory and in the wild. His laboratory work consists of the Ai-project, which focuses on the language-like skills, number-concepts, and memory ability of a female chimpanzee named Ai. Started in 1978, it is one of the longest running laboratory research projects on chimpanzee intelligence. Matsuzawa has been a part of the project since the beginning. Matsuzawa has also studied tool use in the wild chimpanzees at Bossou, Guinea, West Africa since 1986. The bossou chimpanzee community consists of about 12 individuals and has been studied by Japanese researchers for three decades. Bossou chimps are well known to use a pair of stones as hammer and anvil to crack open oil-palm nuts. Long-term research on wild chimpanzee tool use revealed interesting topics like handedness of use of a hammer, critical period of learning nut-cracking at around 3 to 5 year old, "education by master-apprenticeship" and observational learning, possession of stones, deception, new tool use like algae-scooping, use of leaves for cushions, cultural variation in adjacent communities, etc. Matsuzawa's approach to research is to synthesize the field work and the laboratory work in order to understand the nature of chimpanzees, our evolutionary neighbors. Matsuzawa is well known for his research on chimpanzee memory, which suggests that chimpanzees outperform humans on some simple memory tasks. He has argued that this is evidence of a memorial capacity in young chimpanzees that is superior to that seen in adult humans. However, the accuracy of these findings has been disputed. A. Silberberg and D. Kearns have argued that the performance difference between human and chimpanzee trials can be explained by training effects on the tested chimpanzees. They did reach Ayumu's performance level after thousands of trials, but only for 5 numbers whereas Ayumu effortlessly does it for 9. In 2020, Kyoto University announced that Matsuzawa was involved in misappropriating the funding of Primate Research Institute.

Awards

* Prince Chichibu Memorial Science Award in 1991 * Jane Goodall Award in 2001 * The Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2004 * Person of Cultural Merit of 2013, by the government of Japan.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Matsuzawa, Tetsuro Living people Kyoto University alumni Academic staff of Kyoto University Primatologists 1950 births

Awards

See also

References