Crickette Marie Sanz is a professor, naturalist, explorer, and field biologist notable for her work on primates and great apes in the Republic of the Congo.[1]
Sanz received her BS and MS in experimental psychology from Central Washington University,[2] followed by her PhD in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis, where she is currently a professor of biological anthropology.[1]
In 2003, Sanz and field researcher David B. Morgan encountered a naive population of chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle. They did not observe the documented aggression and warlike behaviors previously recorded by Jane Goodall, but instead a curious and friendly population they felt could be "...watch[ed] for 20 years to see what normal behavior really is for chimpanzees."[3]
Sanz has appeared on television in documentaries about great apes.[citation needed]
Sanz's insights have included observations of novel tool use,[4] documentation of the progress of simian foamy virus, and tracking populations using tools like genomics.[5]