Hukuuu-Hukoooo: What Villages & Forests Reveal About Macaques, Gibbons & Apes
About This Event
Hukuuu-Hukoooo is a lecture by primatologist Ishika Ramakrishna, exploring the lives, intelligence, and social worlds of primates. The event will cover topics such as the differences between monkeys and apes, the intelligence of primates, and how humans and primates share landscapes. Attendees will learn about the Nicobar long-tailed macaque and the western hoolock gibbon through stories from the field. The lecture is ideal for wildlife enthusiasts and those curious about evolution.
In this Pint of View lecture, primatologist Ishika Ramakrishna takes us into the world of our closest relatives. Drawing from her fieldwork, she explores the lives, intelligence, and social worlds of primates while answering questions people often hesitate to ask: Why do some primates have tails while others don’t? How smart are they? And how similar are their lives to ours?
The lecture journeys from the Nicobar Islands to the forests and plains of northeast India, introducing two remarkable species along the way: the Nicobar long-tailed macaque and the western hoolock gibbon. Through stories from the field, it looks at how humans and other primates share landscapes, navigate conflicts, and live alongside one another.
About the Speaker Ishika Ramakrishna is a Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, studying the relationships between people and western hoolock gibbons in Upper Assam. Her work sits at the intersection of ethnoprimatology, social sciences, citizen science, science communication, and conservation education.
Beyond academia, she is involved in several collaborative science communication and capacity-building initiatives. She has also written children’s books and hosts a nature podcast, The Thing About Wildlife, bringing stories of the natural world to wider audiences.