How do you become a primatologist?

Answer 1

Step 1: Go to college. Go to the best school you can find that has a good program in Biological Anthropology or Animal Behavior. You may also find primatological opportunities in Evolutionary Biology, Ecology, and Psychology departments. Most primatologists, however, are to be found in Anthro departments. Some places that have good primatologists are Harvard, Yale, UMN, Emory, Ann Arbor, UC Davis, Duke, UIUC, and SUNY Stony Brook, to name a very few.

Step 2: Get field experience. If your college has grants to fund undergraduate research, then great--develop an independent project with a field primatologist you've taken classes with. If this isn't an option for whatever reason, check out http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/jobs for some of the main field sites out there looking for people to do volunteer fieldwork. Emailing people who are doing interesting research and offering them free labor (or nearly free labor) as a field assistant has worked for folks before, too. This step is important, both because it helps you make sure you want to study monkeys as a career and because it's hard to get into grad school without it.

Step 3: Go to Grad School. From here you can either go the academia route or the conservation route; it depends. Do a lot of research. Apply for a lot of grants. Get a PhD, publish as much as you can, and pray that your funding holds out. With luck, you'll get a job in primatology after graduating, and can continue to do field work from there--building this kind of a career is a skill best learned by doing.

Keep in mind that primatology, while oftentimes amazing and fulfilling, are also filled with substantial amounts of tedium, living in third world countries, and primate poo. And the pay sucks. What's more, to make a career out of primatology, you need to be interested in being a good scientist. If you just want to watch monkeys play because they're cute, get a job at a zoo or sanctuary. People don't become primatologists because it's glamorous and every instant is filled with adorably monkey babies. People become primatologists because they love walking around in the woods watching monkeys and trying to figure out why in the world they act the way they do. The pay sucks, its messy and often boring, there's next to no funding for research, and other biologists won't take you seriously. You have to find primates fascinating on a fundamental intellectual level or you won't last.