Natalia Reagan, Comedian, Anthropologist or Actress?? Saturday, May 5, 2012

Natalia’s interest in anthropology began when she took a biological anthropology course during her undergraduate studies at a local community college.  As it turned out, the class changed her life, her way of thinking and the course of her academic career (her major at the time was theater) and she fell in love will anthropology.  She had always been fascinated by human behavior and morphology.   Natalia was fueled by a desire to know how and why humans did the things we did and why our bodies are shaped the way they are.  From theories about the evolution of bipedalism to why women have breasts to why humans wage war, Natalia found anthropology answered questions she had so often asked.  Natalia continued my education at California State University Northridge and focused on biological anthropology.  She completed an honors thesis on Grauer’s gorilla conservation (a gorilla subspecies only found in Democratic Republic of Congo) and finished her undergraduate studies in 2008 with a BA in anthropology and began graduate school in fall of 2009.  Natalia’s focus was primate conservation and for her thesis fieldwork she completed a survey of the Azuero spider monkey in Panama during the summer of 2010 in conjunction with the Azuero Earth Project.   In May she received an MA in anthropology with honors and was presented the Bruce Gelvin Award for biological anthropology.   This September Natalia will be presenting her thesis results at the American Society of Primatologists meeting in Austin, Texas.

During her studies, Natalia still performed in an improv comedy troupe, The Omelettes, and worked as an actor in film and television.  She has appeared on such shows as “My Name is Earl”, “The Drew Carey Show” and “Better Off Ted”.  Natalia also began writing segments to explain human behavior in a humorous and entertaining fashion, all while maintaining the scientific integrity of each subject.  The videos can be seen at www.thestoryofboobs.com

Natalia’s goal is to educate people about human behavior using humor, evolutionary biology and nonhuman primates (monkeys and apes) as models.   Humans are now being faced with serious environmental consequences (climate change, mass extinctions, “super bugs”) due to our irresponsible behavior and she believes knowledge about our origins will help humans find a way to live in harmony with nature again.  Natalia also will continue to work in primate conservation in Panama, as she wholeheartedly believes, monkeys need love, too!

Credits on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2326403/

Her website: http://www.nataliareagan.com/