Richard Walter Wrangham (born 1948) is an English anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University.

[3] His research culminates in the study of human evolution in which he draws conclusions based on the behavioural ecology of apes.

[8] Wrangham began his career as a researcher at Jane Goodall's long-term common chimpanzee field study in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

[13][14][10] The mainstream explanation is that human ancestors, prior to the advent of cooking, turned to eating meats, which then caused the evolutionary shift to smaller guts and larger brains.

[16] His work of studying the essential violence of chimpanzees caused Wrangham to not eat meat for 40 years.