Curator, Primates
A native of DC, Dr. Meredith Bastian is the Curator of Primates at the National Zoo, where she supervises the Primate Unit, oversees the unit’s primate research, and manages animal collections including several Old World primate species, including a variety of apes, monkeys, and lemurs at the Great Ape House, Think Tank, Gibbon Ridge, and Lemur Island. She serves on the Ape Taxon Advisory Group, Orangutan and Gibbon/Siamang Species Survival Plan management teams, and is on the scientific advisory boards of the Orangutan Land Trust and PONGO Foundation of the Netherlands. Before working at the National Zoo, Meredith was the Curator of Primates and Small Mammals at the Philadelphia Zoo. Before this, Meredith spent over seven years conducting field research on the behavior, diet, ecology, genetics, and reproduction of wild orangutans in Central and Western Indonesian Borneo. Before establishing and directing her own wild orangutan field site and managing two others, Meredith studied wild white-handed gibbons in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand, Coquerel’s sifaka at the Duke Lemur Center, and rhesus macaques at the National Institutes of Health Animal Center. Meredith has a B.A. in Anthropology and Psychology from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D in Biological Anthropology & Anatomy from Duke University.