[1] Boesch's first field experience was in 1973, conducting census work on the mountain gorillas of Virunga National Park in Rwanda, under the supervision of Dian Fossey.
[1] In 1975 and 1977 he taught at a secondary school in Geneva; followed by time as an assistant in the Department of Ethology and Wildlife Research at the University of Zurich.
[1] One of his ongoing projects was begun in 1979, studying the "ecology, social organization, tool-use, hunting, cooperation, food-sharing, inter-community relationships, and cognitive capacities" of the chimpanzees at Taï National Park.
[1] From 1997, he was the Director of the Department of Primatology of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Boesch found that the cognitive complexity of chimpanzees is underestimated, for example, in their abilities to cooperate, teach their young or use tools.