Bee Mullins

About

After graduating with a B.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language from Kent State University, Bee began accepting teaching positions across the globe while deciding what to do for graduate school. Eventually, they moved to rural Japan where they taught high school English and frequently observed wild Japanese macaques from their kitchen window. During this time, they began reading about the evolution of human language and great ape communication and became very interested in learning about comparative cognitive research between great apes and human children.

They began graduate school in a linguistics program at Northeastern Illinois University in 2021, where they researched the gestural communication of wild gorillas and eventually completed their thesis, titled Semantic Shift in Gestures of Wild Gorillas.

Bee joined the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes in July 2023. They manage the center’s administrative duties and assists in ongoing research projects on-grounds and with external collaborators. They oversee the internship program and provides training in primate behavioral data collection methods using ZooMonitor.