Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Life Sciences - Zoology - Primatology

It's no secret that humans and apes share a host of traits, from the tribal communities we form to our irrepressible curiosity. We have a common ancestor, scientists tell us, so it's natural that we act alike. But not all of these parallels are so appealing: the chimpanzee, for example, can be as vicious and manipulative as any human.

Yet there's more to our shared primate heritage than just our violent streak. In Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal, one of the world's great primatologists and a renowned expert on social...

This book explores the strikingly similar ways in which information is encoded in nonverbal man-made signals (e.g., traffic lights and tornado sirens) and animal-evolved signals (e.g., color patterns and vocalizations). The book also considers some coding principles for reducing certain unwanted redundancies and explains how desirable redundancies enhance communication reliability.

Jack Hailman believes this work pioneers several aspects of analyzing human and animal communication. The book is the first to survey man-made signals as a class. It is also the first to compare such...

Primatologists have long viewed small fruiting trees, like figs, as the reason for gibbons' territorial and monogamous behavior. However, at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand where gibbons are prevalent, figs are one of the largest trees in the forest. In this long-term field study, Bartlett takes up this apparent contradiction, and follows gibbons as their major food sources wax and wane over time.This is an important reference on gibbons and the study of small apes which provides a thorough, expansive coverage of the relationship between fruit abundance and diet, range use, and...

This book explores afresh the long-standing interest, and emphasis on, the special' capacities of primates. Some of the recent discoveries of the higher cognitive abilities of other mammals and also birds challenge the concept that primates are special and even the view that the cognitive ability of apes is more advanced than that of nonprimate mammals and birds. It is therefore timely to ask whether primates are, in fact, special and to do so from a broad range of perspectives. Divided into five sections this book deals with topics about higher cognition and how it is manifested in...

Conflict between males and females over reproduction is ubiquitous in nature due to fundamental differences between the sexes in reproductive rates and investment in offspring. In only a few species, however, do males strategically employ violence to control female sexuality. Why are so many of these primates? Why are females routinely abused in some species, but never in others? And can the study of such unpleasant behavior by our closest relatives help us to understand the evolution of men's violence against women?

In the first systematic attempt to assess and understand primate...