In this interview for Online Nature, Charlotte Uhlenbroek answers some of your questions about her life, her work and her passion for our Cousins.

When did you meet your first chimp?
When I was 15, I travelled to Gombe. It was there that I met Goblin, an alpha male (the dominant male in a group). I was always fascinated by chimps.

Do you have a favourite chimp?
You can't help but have a favourite. I've got lots in a way, as you do with friends, but Freud is just something special. I studied Freud when I was in Gombe, Tanzania for two years and he just wasn't interested in group politics. All the other males were constantly asserting themselves but he simply wouldn't be submissive, and it wasn't that he was challenging them, he was saying "Who can be bothered with that?".

When did you decide to work with primates?
I met Jane Goodall when I was 15 and she made a big impression on me. I thought, "this is exactly what I would love to do". Maybe if she had been a man it wouldn't have seemed so possible for me to follow suit. When Louis Leakey encouraged the "trimates" Jane Goodall, Birute Galdikas and Dian Fossey to study apes it set the precedent for subsequent generations of women.

What was your first job? When did you find time to get your PhD?
In 1989 I heard that Jane Goodall wanted someone to work in Burundi as a research assistant/conservationist paid for by Leakey Foundation funds. In 1990 I went to Gombe for four years and spent my time habituating (rehabilitating) chimps and gathering data for my PhD, which I did through Bristol University and wrote up in 1994.

When did you start working with the BBC?
While in Gombe I was a scientific advisor on a couple of programme's for National Geographic and Partridge films and then when I came back to Bristol I helped with the BBC programme Dawn to Dusk. I thoroughly enjoyed being part of it all. The Natural History Unit then asked me if I would like to work on Chimpanzee Diary and I seized the chance!

Why are there so many female primatologists?
Men want results but when you are habituating animals in difficult environments, you don't get results quickly. You spend weeks tracking animals and never seeing them. You need lots of patience and I think women are successful with primates because they are good at reading non-verbal communication and being empathic. Physically we are also less threatening which I think helps us to gain trust more quickly.

What is the reality of life studying primates?
Well I lived in a lovely hut by a lake and it was just idyllic and at night the stars are fantastic in Africa. I get a lot of young women saying "I want to go!" but you start talking about everything going mouldy and the bites and malaria and you can see them going off it. I knew I could cope because I was brought up in some the world's remote regions - Kathmandu, parts of Africa. It is hard physical work trekking through wilderness for 10 hours a day, nine of them in pouring rain during the wet season. But I do miss it all when I'm back in England!

How does this kind of work affect your human relationships?
I adore my family, there's no way I could not see them. And although I know that horrible feeling when you leave - you're convinced that something's going to happen as soon as you do - I am very much a people person. I am happy to live alone for long periods of time, but I do miss people. I have always led a very nomadic life - we travelled all over the world when I was younger. All of my family love wildlife and my parents have always been environmentally concerned. I think I am probably the most extreme!

What will you be doing next?
I will be taking part in the Ape Alliance Event at Westminster Hall on 27th September to raise ape conservation issues. I think it is terribly important that we are aware of what is happening to our closest relatives, where we are and where we came from. Great apes can offer us huge insight into ourselves. Things we think of as uniquely human characteristics - sociability, bipedalism, intelligence - we can now see in other closely related species and observe their evolution. The great apes are in trouble and in the next 5-10 years their fate will have been sealed. We can help - even in small ways - because everything is connected. The decisions we make every day affect the global economy and that's a very powerful force for change.