Amazon.com
Robert Sapolsky, the author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and other popular books on animal and human behavior, decided early in life to become a primatologist, volunteering at the American Museum of Natural History and badgering his high school principal to let him study Swahili to prepare for travel in Africa. When he set out to conduct fieldwork as a young graduate student, though, Sapolsky found that life among a Kenyan baboon troop was markedly different from his earlier bookish studies. Among other things, he confesses, he had to become a master of shooting anesthetic darts into his subjects with a blowgun to take blood samples, a mastery that required him to become "a leering slinky silent quicksilver baboon terror." He also had to learn how to negotiate the complexities of baboon politics, endure the difficulties of life in the bush, and subsist on cases of canned mackerel and beans.

His memoir is, in the main, quite humorous, although Sapolsky flings a few darts along the way at the late activist Dian Fossey--who, he hints, may have indirectly caused the deaths of her beloved mountain gorillas by her unstable, irrational dealings with local people--and at local bureaucrats whose interests did not often coincide with those of Sapolsky's wild charges. It is also full of good information on primates and primatology, a subject whose practitioners, it seems, are constantly fighting to save species and ecosystems. "Every primatologist I know is losing that battle," he writes. "They make me think of someone whose unlikely job would be to collect snowflakes, to rush into a warm room and observe the unique pattern under a microscope before it melts and is never seen again." --Gregory McNameeBook Description
"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote Africa.

An exhilarating account of Sapolsky's twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate's Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti -- for man and beast alike. Over two decades, Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on the farthest vestiges of unspoiled Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore enamored of his subjects -- unique and compelling characters in their own right -- and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him.

By turns hilarious and poignant, A Primate's Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (64)

Pure Poetry
This is a beautiful, poignant, fascinating and enlightening read.It's also a bit heart-wrenching.Despite the fact that it is ostensibly about baboons, each sentence within this book contains more humanity and feeling than a typical week of day to day living on our strange modern worlds.

A Student's Praise
I am a student of Bio-Anthropology, and I have to say that when it comes to bio-anthro, especially my specialty- Primatology- the textbooks NEVER tell you everything you need to know in order to be a good Primatologist, but Robert Sapolsky does in "A Primate's Memoir."

Sapolsky delivers a narrative that is at once fanciful and credible. Too bizarre to be taken as anything other than reality. The experience of the author as a budding scientist in the Kenyan Serengeti, coming of age amidst the incongruous corruption and stark beauty of the African continent, as he works his way through the American Academic Dominance Hierarchy while conducting a long-term study on Savannah Baboons. He mixes cross-cultural social commentary with humorous storytelling. It is literally a laugh-out loud kind of book, particularly for the budding anthropologist. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the field. In a way, it is like the primatological equivalent of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," except that is all true. A brilliant book, which every anthropologist should read.

BTW, all anthro textbooks should have chapters dedicated to the trials and tribulations one must endure while living among other cultures, dealing with third world corruption, and knowing how to negotiate the African social arena. I feel more worldly for having read this masterpiece.

Highly Recommend A Primate's Memoir
Sapolsky's humor, wit, and intelligence blend beautifully in this entertaining yet eye-opening novel about his years spent following baboons in Africa.He brings out the human-primate connection that so many people forget or never realize exits, and he's a great testament that scientists can be funny and smart!A really great story for anyone, especially biologists, animal lovers, and anyone with an interest in animal behavior and research.

funny and moving
I bought this book completely on a whim and just loved it.I keep telling people about it, but I just can't quite convey what is so great about a book about babboons.Sapolsky doesn't take himself too seriously as he tells us about his amazing adventures.

Warm, Funny, Informative
For three months of each year over a couple of decades Robert Sapolsky studied a troop of olive baboons in Kenya. His main interest was stress-related disease and he darted male baboons to take blood samples. Unfortunately, female baboons could not be a part of the study because of the dangers involved to mothers and infants. The insights into this baboon troop are fascinating - the different personalities and behaviors clearly do away with the simplistic ideas of the anthropologists of the 60s and 70s. We have some males less interested with the battle for top rank, preferring the company of youngsters, and savvy females outmaneuvering undesirable top-ranking males during estrus. Though it should be added there is plenty of male battling and bullying too.

Much of this book is also about east Africa - particularly Kenyan history and the local tribes, including the Masai. The various human individuals and the various adventures of the author make this a far wider study of primates than baboons. It is impossible not to become involved in these adventures as well as the lives of the baboons. I felt enormous sympathy with the author when he ultimately has to face the relative insignificance of his baboons to anyone else when tragedy struck.

Excellent warm, funny, informative book. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (6)

YOU NEED THIS BOOK!
This is an engaging, honest and intriguing story documenting a scientist doing fieldwork/research on a baboon troop.Although vastly informative and fact-filled, it is written for a general reader and refreshingly free of jargon.Ms. Strum also allows feelings - her own and the baboons' - toenter into the picture, as George Schaller did in "Year of the Gorilla," although Ms. Strum writes with much more humor than Dr. Schaller.Her observations and theories about baboon behavior - especially the male/female relationships - are extraordinary and compelling.I've re-read this book twice, just for the pleasure it gives me, and I highly recommend it to anyone who finds this type of research fascinating.And a terrific companion piece is "A Primate's Memoir," by Robert Sapolsky, also a researcher among the baboons...

A SCIENTIST BECOMES A SAVIOUR
This book could not have come into my life at a more opportune time.As a Volunteer Wildlife Police Officer I am involved inter alia in investigation of illegal possession of all wild species. However I had developed a particular interest in and love for primates - notably here vervet monkeys and baboons which are the most commonly "kept" here.I had made it my goal to remove as many of these from private possession as humanly possible. In all cases we find these intensely sociable animals being kept on their own, and with their movements restricted to no more than a few feet.After confiscation I start the rehabilitation process myself and then pass them on to a large sanctuary in Lusaka where they are integrated into troops and start their new lives.However my ultimate goal was to return them to a totally free life in the wild.Shirley Strum's seminal and successful translocation of the "Pumphouse Gang" in Kenya therefore convinced me that we had a chance of doing the same with our individuals/troops.The difference being that the "Pumphouse Gang" had always lived free and ours not.Shirley Strum's greatest accolade should be that she went beyond being the objective observer to caring participant.If Strum had only been involved with the baboons as subjects of an intellectual exercise, she would have been no different to many other scientists many of whom are responsible for hideous acts of cruelty to our non-human relatives.Thankfully, when the "Pumphouse Gang" was at risk of destruction, she allowed her humanity to guide her and so committed herself to finding a solution to their plight which was successful.I must admit that as a layman, some of the anthropological observations went over my head!I do feel that this is an extremely important study for anyone involved with primates, and those involved in the anti-vivesection movement (certainly in Africa where baboons are used as laboratory animals) since as the title states - they are "almost human".

An important book of science and meta-science
Strum's account of her fieldwork is intensely interesting, as she looked past the "received wisdom" about baboon hierarchies and saw what was really going on.Of course baboons are not identical to humans - but the fundamental impulses of baboon behavior and their strategies for dealing with the their society and the world around them are similar to many things humans do; Strum claims no more than that.

Just as fascinating as her discoveries about baboons, however, is her account of the effort to get her field results heard within the closed shop of baboon studies.She ran into a problem that damages almost all the sciences:The experts who get to decide whether the results of your research get published in scientific journals are usually the very same people whose triumphant discoveries of twenty years ago your research is about to supercede or even contradict.Naturally they think your work is nonsense and do all they can to keep it from getting published - because if you are right, and prevail, then their great work is erased.This struggle has been faced by so many scientists that it's a wonder we ever advance human learning at all.The only things that get published quickly and easily are the results that confirm our preexisting views.Indeed, one sees quite a bit of baboon behavior among scientists - as among all other humans....

This was an important book for me, with insights that I have used in my own writing for years.I'm glad it's coming back into print in a new paperback edition.It's about time!

Almost Human: A Journey into the World of Baboons
This was a fascinating look at baboons society. It was also extraordinarily personal in perspective. The book was absorbing and easy to read science written in a very subjective voice. The author gets veryemotionally involved in her subjects and lets that come through clearly.She presents a somewhat controversial approach to field work.

Wonderful-I felt like I was in the field with her
As someone who has studied primates in the field, I greatly related to this book. Studying primatesis so rewarding and I enjoyed sharing her discoveries and her journey. It is an easy read, and you will not want toput it down. Kudos to Dr. Strum ... Read more

Book Description

This book is an essential, up-to-date reference on the behavior, ecology, and reproduction of wild hamadryas baboons. This book rectifies the male-biased view of hamadryas baboon behavior that has persisted over the decades, suggesting that female behavior contributes more to hamadryas social organization than has previously been assumed, and that females may, in fact, be acting in their own best interests after all. Those potentially conducting research on hamadryas baboons, baboons in general, or primates in general include university faculty, researchers at other institutions, and undergraduate and graduate students world-wide.

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Archaeological Science, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Recently, Lam et al. (J. Archaeol. Sci. (2003) in press) reviewed zooarchaeological studies of bulk bone mineral density (bulk BMD), demonstrating the degree to which several studies accurately assessed volumes at regions of interest (ROIs) on bones. It has been suggested that bulk BMD measurements obtained with a clinical computed tomography (CT) technology are preferable to those obtained with a photon densitometry (PD) technology. The basis for this suggestion comes from the unavoidable fact that (non-destructive) PD-based studies have been less precise in estimating area bounded by the periosteal envelope and entirely unable to subtract area bounded by the endosteal envelope. Here we present a new technique for shape-adjusting ROI volumes in the context of re-evaluating baboon bulk BMD data that were published in an earlier study and incorporated no shape-adjustment (J. Archaeol. Sci. 29 (2002) 883). We suggest that this new shape-adjustment method, similar to that of Stahl (J. Archaeol. Sci. 26 (1999) 1347), improves accuracy of volumetric density measurements by producing ROI volumes that are quantified similarly to CT generated ROI volumes (i.e., using a highly automated direct measurement). Correlation coefficients are higher using the shape-adjusted data probably because ROI volumes more accurately reflect the amount of bone by minimizing external air in bulk BMD calculations. While revised bulk BMD values are consistently higher than values without shape-adjustment, once shape-adjustment is incorporated, the rank order of revised baboon bulk BMD values is correlated significantly with the rank order of bovid (i.e., sheep) ROIs. Thus, intertaxonomic differences in the patterns of baboons and similarly sized bovid skeletal element representation are unlikely to be attributable to density-mediated destructive processes, since these processes would be expected to remove skeletal parts of each taxon similarly. For baboon ROIs, rank ordered bulk BMD was not correlated significantly with any of the rank ordered skeletal part frequencies in primate fossil assemblages from Swartkrans Cave (South Africa) investigated previously. Thus, intrataxonomic patterns of primate skeletal part frequency in these fossil assemblages also are not attributable to a density-mediated destructive process. We recommend that bovid bulk BMD values not be used to assess density-mediated processes in a primate assemblage, or vice versa, since correlation coefficients were not 1.0. ... Read more

Product Description
Author's life in science, especially with baboons in Africa. By one of the best science writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Entertaining and enlightening memoir of primate life.
As much fun to read as any book by Redmond O'Hanlon or Gerald Durrell, A Primate's Memoir is funny, irreverent, and full of adventure, while also being a serious scientific study of the savanna baboons of Kenya. Sapolsky's goal is to determine the relationship of baboon stress levels to their overall health over a period of years. A neuroscientist, he observes the social hierarchy and interactions of his baboon group, guesses which individuals appear to be most stressed or most relaxed and then checks their hormones and blood chemistry, not an easy procedure, given his clever and not always co-operative population. Sapolsky, who works alone, must first outwit the baboon, use a blowgun to dart him, follow and wait for him to become unconscious, and then carry him half a mile or more to his portable lab facilities, where he then draws blood and does measurements. The baboons, of course, react to stress the way humans do.

The title of A Primate's Memoir is deliberately ambiguous--it is both Sapolsky's memoir and that of his baboon population, and his experiences and interactions with the outside world are remarkably similar to theirs. Leaving the relative safety of the game reserves and hitchhiking into dangerous territories during his "down time," Sapolsky describes his travels with enthusiasm, impeccable timing, and great, self-deprecating humor, subtly selecting details which show how similarly he and his baboon population deal with their worlds' uncertainties. Kenya is experiencing civil unrest and corruption; Uganda has just deposed Idi Amin; the Sudan is in the midst of a long civil war; the border of Zaire is under siege; and the Somalis refuse to accept any borders at all, stealing lands and property wherever they go--all dangerous and stressful atmospheres for their populations and for visitors like the author.

Sapolsky is a great story teller, however, equally entertaining in presenting both his adventures and his research, his world and that of his baboons. While life may be "nasty, brutish, and short," Sapolsky shows us it's a lot more fun if one keeps a sense of humor--and a lot less stressful. Mary Whipple ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Essential tool for the Anatomist and student
By far this is Swindler's best work (see also his "Dentition of Living Primates') - the way this book is set-up makes it incredibly easy to use and visually pleasing as well.This oversized volume follows the regional dissection (wonderfully rendered in black and white by Charles Wood) of Papio anubis and Pan troglodytes on one side and Homo sapiens and the accompanying text on the other.When performing multiple primate dissections or comparing structures this is a definite bonus. This is the only volume that I know of that approaches primate anatomy in this way - W.K. Gregory's "Anatomy of the Gorilla" comes close (esp. with the oversized fold-outs of the upper & lower limb done life size) - but doesn't provide the comparitive detail that Swindler & Wood do.

I have used this text many times both in the lab and in the classroom and heartily endorse it for anyone working in anatomy, animal sciences, primatology, and physical anthropology.This book is worth its weight in gold and you will find yourself constantly referring to it.

Also useful in this text are the charts at the end of the book covering the musculature and innervation in each genus - priceless in itself.In fact I do not know of another comparitive source for that information - I would often use these charts as handouts in classes.This is a volume that you'll never regret having - you will find yourself using it more often than you thought.

Primate Gross Anatomy
27 years after it was first published an "Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy" remains the definitive text on catarrhine anatomy.The primary focus of the atlas is the regional anatomy of the baboon withcomparative references to Pan and Man (Homo sapiens sapiens). All regionsare covered with special emphasis placed on the limbs.The text is clearlywritten and well referenced by Dr. Swindler and beautifully illustrated inboth carbon dust and pen and ink techniques by Charles Wood.This is amandatory reference book for primate anatomists and veterinarians and ishighly recommended for many specialty courses in primatology and humanevolutionary anatomy. ... Read more

Book Description
The editors will address the questions of life history and reproduction by attempting to isolate the various components of reproductive success and fitness in baboons. This requires assembling research interests in morphology, behavior, ecology, and endocrinology of the five subspecies of Papio baboons. By synthesizing studies of reproduction, life history, growth, parenting, ecology, mate choice, and mating success, this volume will shed light on general features of life history traits and reproductive strategies that have made baboons successful. These findings have broad applications to understanding the evolution of complex life history adaptations, such as those characteristic of other primates, and humans in particular. Many of the top researchers on the field are contributing to this volume. ... Read more

Book Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

haha flange?
Flange?

A made up word from not the 9'oclock news finds its way into a review?

marvelous

The only guide
Despite the title, I'd prefer to have sex and friendship outside of a baboon, but for those brave enough to try, this book is an indispensable guide.

As the great Groucho Marx once said, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, of course, it's too dark to read." And I might add--sex and friendship too.

Excellent
In this marvelous book Smuts draws from years of painstaking field research in which she followed around a flange of chacma baboons in the Mateti Game Park in Zimbabwe. Her findings inspired the plot of When Harry Met Sally. ... Read more

Book Description