Joaquim Veà Baró (11 October 1958 – 23 February 2016) was a Catalan primatologist.
Baró was a student of Jordi Sabater Pi,àBaró as well as a biopsychology professor at the University of Barcelona and the director of the university's Primate Research Centre. His research in the jungles of Zaire and Veracruz focused on the relationship between the environment and behavior of primates, and changes in their relationships due to human activity.
He died in Barcelona on 23 February 2016, two years after being diagnosed with cancer.
Career
Joaquim Veà, was born on 11 October 1958, and grew up in the neighbourhood of Sant Andreu de Palomar in Barcelona. The Internet scholar Andreu Veà Baró is his brother. He completed his degree in Psychology at the University of Barcelona in 1983, and three years later, in 1986, his doctorate with a thesis on animal behavior, named "Functional models in animal behavior: simulation of a motivational system".
Before completing his degree he published “IQ and individual differences” (1982), and from 1983 he started to become interested in issues of animal behavior, a subject on which he developed his doctoral thesis after publishing “Cognitive processes in animal behavior: an psycho-linguistic application” (1983), and “Symbolic behavior in the white rat: simulation of the learning of words” (1986), pieces of work which analysed the possibilities of extrapolating to humans the results of behavioral experiments on lower animals.
Veà was a close associate and protégée of Jordi Sabater Pi, the discoverer of the white gorilla Copito de Nieve. Veà collaborated with Sabater Pi in research on bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) in the jungle of Zaire in 1988. Research he conducted within the period of 1985-1996, focused on behavioral variability and the processes of adaption. On top of joint publications with Sabater Pi, various studies on primate behavior stand out from this period, including “Instrumental behavior of the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) in its natural habitat” (1988), and “Innovation and diffusion of behavior patterns in primate societies: the birth of culture” (1990). He also accompanied Sabater Pi in 1997 when he was president of the Spanish Association of Primatology, Veà acting as vice-president.
In 2000 he completed an award-winning project on the Conkouati-Douli National Park (Republic of the Congo).
Relationship with Veracruz
Veà's relationship with the University of Veracruz began in 1997 when he participated in an exchange program for university professors organised by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, which he repeated in 1998 and again in 1999. It was in Veracruz where he met Ernesto Rodríguez Luna, with whom he continued to collaborate later on.
This first contact made it possible to sign a collaboration agreement between the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Barcelona and the Institute of Neuroethology at the University of Veracruz in 2000.
In 2001, he first came into contact with Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve in Veracruz, Mexico. Considered the most northern jungle on the planet and declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO, Veà saw an opportunity to deepen the study of ethological factors initiated by Sabater Pi.
From 2002 he extended the institutional collaboration incorporating students from both universities in the investigation work in the jungle. This activity has allowed the participation of fifty students in the first ten years, whose work is summed up in twenty theses on aspects related to alouatta palliata populations, studied in-situ, half of which Joaquim Veà himself supervised.
In 2005 he began to research the effects of isolation in “fragments of rainforest” – caused by deforestation – on the populations of alouatta (howler monkeys). Alouatta are tree-dwelling animals that live virtually without touching the ground; the fragmentation of the rainforest causes them to become immobilized in one area.
In 2011 he undertook a new campaign in Los Tuxtlas at the San Martin Volcano, part of a joint project between the University of Barcelona and the University of Veracruz. The team, co-directed by Joaquim Veà and Ernesto Rodríguez Luna from the Mexican university, investigated the impact of territorial fragmentation on the conservation of the alouatta palliata. Although the species is not endangered on a global scale, within the jungle of Veracruz researchers have detected a decrease in the population, inspiring this collaborative work of analysis.