Our laboratory mainly studies wild nonhuman primates by fieldwork, sometimes supplemented with laboratory methods, to clarify their ecology, behavior, and society. Our ultimate goal is to understand the process of hominization and how the human nature has evolved. One of the effective approaches to achieving this ultimate goal is to explore the origins of various human behavioral traits in the great apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, which are phylogenetically closely related to humans. However, in some cases, its origin can be traced back to monkeys that are distantly related to humans, or in other cases monkeys may have evolved some traits similar to humans but not seen among great apes.

At the Laboratory of Human Evolution Studies, each faculty member and student freely selects study topics and subject species based on their individual interests, and conducts research at several sites in Japan and overseas.