- Among Orangutans
- Carel van Schaik
- Photographs by Perry van Duijnhoven
- In a narrative that is part adventure, part field journal, part call to conscience, van Schaik introduces us to the colorful characters and complex lives of the orangutans who inhabit the vanishing forests of Sumatra. Here are the births and deaths, the first use of a tool, the defeat of a rival, the gradual loss of influence that, while fascinating to observe, may also help us to reconstruct human evolution.
- Hardcover 2004
- Chimpanzee and Red Colobus
- Craig B. Stanford
- Richard W. Wrangham
- This book, the first long-term field study of a predator-prey relationship involving two wild primates, documents a six-year investigation into how the risk of predation molds primate society. Taking us to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a place made famous by Jane Goodall's studies, the book offers a close look at how predation by wild chimpanzees--observable in the park as nowhere else--has influenced the behavior, ecology, and demography of a population of red colobus monkeys.
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2001
- The Dynamic Dance
- Barbara J. King
- Using dynamic systems theory, an approach employed to study human communication, King is able to demonstrate the genuine complexity of apes' social communication, and the extent to which their interactions generate meaning. As King describes, apes create meaning primarily through their body movements--and go well beyond conveying messages about food, mating, or predators.
- Hardcover 2004
- Faces in the Forest
- Karen B. Strier
- The woolly spider monkey, or muriqui, is one of the most threatened primate species in the world. Because of deforestation in their natural habitat--the Atlantic coastal forests of southeastern Brazil--the muriquis are confined to less than 3 percent of their original range. This book traces the natural history of the muriqui from its scientific discovery in 1806 to its current, highly endangered status. Karen Strier provides a case study of this scientifically important primate species by balancing field research and ecological issues.
- Paperback 1999
- Manipulative Monkeys
- Susan Perry
- Joseph H. Manson, With
- This book takes us into a Costa Rican forest teeming with simian drama, where since 1990 primatologists Perry and Manson have followed four generations of capuchins. The authors describe behavior as entertaining--and occasionally as alarming--as it is recognizable: competition and cooperation, jockeying for position and status, peaceful years under an alpha male devolving into bloody chaos, and complex traditions passed from one generation to the next. Interspersed with their observations are the authors' colorful tales of the challenges of tropical fieldwork.
- Hardcover 2008
- Parenting for Primates
- Harriet J. Smith
- In this natural history of primate parenting, Smith compares parenting by nonhuman and human primates. In a narrative rich with vivid anecdotes derived from interviews with primatologists, from her own experience breeding cottontop tamarin monkeys for over thirty years, and from her clinical psychology practice, Smith describes the ways that primates care for their offspring, from infancy through young adulthood.
- Hardcover 2006
- Sex and Friendship in Baboons
- Barbara B. Smuts
- When it first appeared in the mid-1980s, this book transcended the traditional ethological focus on sexual interactions by analyzing male-female relationships outside the context of mating in a troop of wild baboons. Barbara Smuts used long-term friendships between males and females, documented over a two-year period, to show how social interactions between members of friendly pairs differed from those of other troop mates. Her findings, now enhanced with data from another fifteen years of field studies, suggest that the evolution of male reproductive strategies in baboons can only be understood by considering the relationship between sex and friendship: female baboons prefer to mate with males who have previously engaged in friendly interaction with them and their offspring. Smuts suggests that female choice may promote male investment in other species, and she explores the relevance of her findings for the evolution of male-female relationships in humans.
- Paperback 1999
- Tree of Origin
- Edited by Frans B. M. de Waal
- Nine of the world's top primate experts compose the most extensive picture to date of what the behavior of monkeys and apes can tell us about our own evolution as a species.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2002