A study of primatology, discussing its history, the scientists in the field, and the issues that have shaped its development, particularly gender, technology, and the media.
In these multidisciplinary essays, academic scholars and animal experts explore the nature of animal minds and the methods humans conventionally and unconventionally use to understand them. The collection features chapters by scholars working in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, literary studies, and art, as well as chapters by and about people who live and work with animals, including the founder of a sanctuary for chickens, a fur trapper, a popular canine psychologist, a horse trainer, and an art photographer who captures everyday contact between humans and their animal companions. Divided into five sections, the collection first considers the ways that humans live with animals and the influence of cohabitation on their perceptions of animals' minds. It follows with an examination of anthropomorphism as both a guide and hindrance to mapping animal consciousness. Chapters next examine the effects of embodiment on animals' minds and the role of animal-human interembodiment on humans' understandings of animals' minds. Final sections identify historical representations of difference between human and animal consciousness and their relevance to pre-established cultural attitudes, as well as the ways that representations of animals' minds target particular audiences and sometimes produce problematic outcomes. The editors conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the book's chapters and two pressing themes: the connection between human beliefs about animals' minds and human ethical behavior, and the challenges and conditions for knowing the minds of animals. By inviting readers to compare and contrast multiple, uncommon points of view, this collection offers a unique encounter with the diverse perspectives and theories now shaping animal studies.
This collection of essays offers multifaceted explorations of animal encounters in a range of philosophical, cultural, literary, and historical contexts. Exploring Animal Encounters encourages us to think about the richness and complexity of animal lives and human-animal relations, foregrounding the intricate roles nonhuman creatures play in the always already more-than-human sphere of ethics and politics. In this way, the essays in this volume can be understood as a contribution to alternative imaginings of interspecies coexistence in a time in which the issue of human relations with earth and earth others has come to the fore with unprecedented force and severity.
Primate Societies is a synthesis of the most current information on primate socioecology and its theoretical and empirical significance, spanning the disciplines of behavioral biology, ecology, anthropology, and psychology. It is a very rich source of ideas about other taxa. "A superb synthesis of knowledge about the social lives of non-human primates."—Alan Dixson, Nature
This game-changing book questions long-accepted rules of primate socioecology and redefines the field from the ground up. In Primate Socioecology, renowned researcher Lynne A. Isbell offers a fresh perspective on primate social organizations that redefines the field from the ground up. Through her innovative Variable Home Range Sharing model, Isbell unravels the mystery of why some primates live alone while others live in pairs or groups—a question that has perplexed scientists for decades. This new approach diverges from the traditional focus on predation pressure as the main determinant of primate social organization to reveal deeper ecological causes of primate behavior. The implications of this shift are profound, underscoring the critical importance of a behavioral-ecological mechanism in which varying movement strategies affect which females share their home ranges and ultimately pointing to a new functional classification system for primate social organizations. Isbell also discusses: • a supportive test of predicted movement strategies using activity budgets • why thermal constraints explain the dichotomy between small nocturnal primates and large diurnal primates • the role of sensory differences in nocturnal solitary foragers versus diurnal group-living primates Useful as both an introduction to primate socioecology and for those seeking a robust examination of the topic, Primate Socioecology addresses scientific debates about primate social organizations and invites researchers to question long-held assumptions.
An enthralling book on monkeys and apes of the rainforests. Fascinating facts about several primate species are reflected and appealingly narrated from experiential encounters in the wilderness of Borneo. The author brilliantly takes readers through the evolution of man by selectively highlighting the physical features and behavioural biology of the species discussed in the book. Unprecedented destructions of the rainforests have driven countless animal and plant species to the brink of extinction, including monkeys and apes. Immediate and effective conservation of the rainforest habitats remain their last hope. In this book, the author is advocating mindful approaches to saving these endangered species from disappearing forever. Evolutionarily, we need to recognise the unique commonality between us humans and the primates. The connectedness goes beyond the evolution of morphological changes and adaptable features. We also share the genesis of learning behaviour and building of culture. Additionally, the book is delightfully illustrated with drawings by the author himself as he reveals the science of nature through the eyes of a naturalist.
Applies an ethnographic perspective to the study of primatesPrimate Ethnographies, 1/e is a collection of first-person accounts of immersive field studies of primates, people, and institutions, revealing the wide spectrum of primate science (primatology). Essays cover such primates as lemurs, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, and apes. Readers experience the excitement of discovery and the challenges of primate field research. Primate Ethnographies can be used as a textbook or a companion reader.
This book considers primate tourism as a primate conservation tool, weighing its effects and developing informed guidelines for ongoing and future tourism ventures.
The VIIIth International Congress of the International Prirnatological Society was held from 7 through 11 July 1980 in Florence, Italy, under the auspices of the host institution, the Istituto di Antropologia of the University of Flor~nce. More than 300 papers and abstracts were presented either at the main Congress or in 14 pre-Congress symposia the week earlier (so scheduled to avoid conflicting with either the main invited lectures or the contributed paper sessions). This volume consists of the contributed papers concerning primate behavior, with special emphasis on those social aspects that reflect on or affect primate biology. Clearly, this is one of the more important and popular subdisciplines in primatology today. We have thus restricted the subject, in agreement with the publishers, in order to ensure a successful and useful volume that is likely to be generally noticed and widely available, as these up-to-date contributions deserve. Furthermore, we have compiled this volume in a fairly new way for congress proceedings. In view of space limitations, and the need to guarantee a high-quality and sufficiently specialized book, we subjected all manuscripts to a four-level internal review process and selected only the best 23 of the 50 submissions. We favored natural-observation work over captive studies. This rejection rate of 54% exceeds that of almost all reviewed scholarly journals.
Professor Linda M. Fedigan, Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has made major contributions to our understanding of the behavioural ecology of primates. Furthermore, Linda Fedigan pioneered and continues to advance scholarship on the role of women in science, as well as actively promoting the inclusion of women in the academy. A symposium in honour of her career was held in Banff (Alberta, Canada) in December 2016, during which former and current students and collaborators, as well as scientists with similar research interests, presented and discussed their work and their connections to Linda Fedigan. These presentations and discussions are here presented as chapters in this festschrift. The original works presented in this book are organized around four major research areas that have been greatly advanced and influenced by Linda Fedigan: Primate life histories Sex roles, gender, and science Primate-environment interactions Primate adaptation to changing environments