Best apes & monkeys biology books according to redditors

We found 15 Reddit comments discussing the best apes & monkeys biology books. We ranked the 10 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

Next page

Top Reddit comments about Biology of Apes & Monkeys:

u/skaaii · 20 pointsr/askscience

One clue may lie in how Capuchin monkey mothers deal with the deaths of their infants. Capuchin mothers whose infants are killed by males during infanticide will demonstrate hostility and form coalitions against the murdering males. In her book "Manipulative Monkeys," Perry relates how, after Macadamia (infant) was killed, Mani (mom) forms a coalition against Moth (the killer) and a major fight erupts.
>>About a half an hour later, Hannah [a field researcher] calls again: ' She's still got Macadamia. She's starting to handle the body a little more roughly, but she's not ready to give it up yet . She has been threatening and alarm calling at Moth some more.

Some time passes and another infant is thrashed, but lives. Eventually Mani leaves the body and takes off for an hour (Capuchin mothers almost never leave their infants for more than a few seconds) and does not come back.

A year later, Mani had a stillborn infant.
>>Mani was carrying the dead infant everywhere she went... sometime she grasped Pobrecito [the stillborn infant] around the waist, and other times, she held on to the tail or other appendage, letting the body dangle as she locomoted. When she needed to eat or groom someone, she set the body down on a branch, usually continuing to grasp it with a foot. She did, however, occasionally groom the body of her dead baby. Her son Maranon inspected his dead sibling frequently.
.

Eventually, the jungle insects do what they evolved to, and begin to eat her dead infant.
>>Around 9:00 AM, flies started buzzing around the body, and this irritated Mani, who kept trying to catch the flies. Mani became preoccupied with the baby's anal region and repeatedly licked and sucked on it, as if ingesting fluids emitted from the body. Although she was concerned with keeping the anogenital region clean, and with keeping the body free of insects, she did not treat the body as if it were alive in other respects. For example, whenever she got a drink of water, she allowed the body to be completely submerged in the water. Mani carried the body all day and slept with it that night.

Mani continued to care for her (now decomposing) infant for another day, but a few times she and others would alarm call at it (as if it was a stranger or a threat), while other times that other females came to inspect it, she'd chase them away. Later that evening, though, she abandoned it too.
.
The point I see in both these cases is that the awareness of the mortality of others is the result of maternal caring behaviors, but in the wild, where death meets them regularly, a more complex form of mourning (rumination, depression) would have meant fewer opportunities to eat and reproduce.
.

Nature is savage, in order to build a brain that can think of it's own mortality, we'd have to explain why this would benefit an animal, or at least explain why it's a side effect of another behavior that itself is a benefit in evolutionary terms. In an environment where animals rarely make it to old age (though Capuchins actually do make it more often), we'd more often see animals desensitized to it and conversely, if we found animals that evolved in an environment of low mortality (I can't think of any) we might see them evolve awareness of their mortality

tldr: probably not because nature is cruel and death is common.

ps: here is an example of tufted Capuchins, the ones I described.

u/Sasquatch_in_CO · 4 pointsr/bigfoot

IMO: Impossible Visits: The Inside Story of Interactions with Sasquatch at Habituation Sites https://www.amazon.com/dp/1436398517/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_SLB3DbAXVYK4B

u/dange-the-balls · 3 pointsr/Damnthatsinteresting

It’s not post modern at all :) it’s incredibly relevant and contemporary primatology, as well as some philosophy especially in the realm of ethics. There’s some wonderful books on the this and I’ll list the links for them if you ever want to check them out

In the Shadow of Man (1971) this one is a bit old but incredible considering it was one of the first accounts of primate behaviour so accurate.

Sapiens (2014) now this book is an incredible read if you want a brief , easy and wonderful account of humans over our evolution. And what makes us “different.”

Primates and Philosophers (2006)

A personal favourite of mine, an excellent account at how something as “human” as morality is something perhaps shared amongst at least some great apes


The Metaphysics of Apes: Negotiating the Animal-Human Boundary(2005)

And a rather analytical text, tracing the interpretation of the human-like great apes and ape-like earliest ancestors of present-day humans, this study demonstrates how from the days of Linnaeus to the present, the sacred and taboo-ridden animal-human boundary was constantly tested. The unique dignity of humans, a central value in the West, was, and to some extent still is, on the minds of taxonomists, ethnologists, primatologists, and archaeologists. This book thus offers an anthropological analysis of the burgeoning anthropological disciplines in terms of their own cultural taboos and philosophical preconceptions.

u/frangistan · 3 pointsr/offmychest

Pressure like this can break a person, and there's no telling what you'll do to yourself or others if that happens.

I would recommend putting as much mental distance between you and Islam/religion as possible. I've found that the best place to start is reading about chimpanzees, since as the species most similar to ours they shed a lot of light on the origins of our morals, mindsets, and behaviors. I think your own curiosity will guide you from there. The best starter book for reading about chimpanzees is Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man.

u/UglyFossils · 3 pointsr/askscience

True confession - I come at these questions from the croc side of things, so I don't often dig into the hominin side of the equation. (I leave that to you guys, the paleoanthropologists). However, there are several papers out there describing croc bite marks on our relatives. It's not hard to imagine that having large ambush predators hiding in any available water source would have made east Africa a dangerous home for early hominins (and sometimes modern humans). Since you've outed yourself as a phd student, have some citations:

Brochu, C.A., J. Njau, R.J. Blumenschine, and L.D. Densmore, 2010. A new horned crocodile from the Plio-Pleistocene hominid sites at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. PLoS One, 5(2): e9333.

Brochu, C.A. and G.W. Storrs, 2012. A giant crocodile from the Plio-Pleistocene of Kenya, the phylogenetic relationships of Neogene African crocodylines, and the antiquity of Crocodylus in Africa. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 32(3): 587-602.

Davidson, I. and S. Soloman, 1990. Was OH7 the victim of a crocodile attack? In Problem Solving in Taphonomy: Archaeological and Palaeontological Studies from Europe, Africa and Oceania. Eds. Solomon, S., I. Davidson, and D. Watson. St. Lucia, Queensland: Tempus, 197-206.

Gebo, D.L. and E.L. Simons, 1984. Puncture marks on early African anthropoids. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 65: 31-35.

Njau, J.K., 2012. Reading Pliocene bones. Science, 46: 46-47.

Njau, J.K. and R.J. Blumenschine, 2006. A diagnosis of crocodile feeding traces on larger mammal bone, with fossil examples from the Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Basin, Tanzania. Journal of Human Evolution, 50(2): 142-162.

Also, there's a great half-science/half-pop sci book on predation on hominins called Man the Hunted that surveys a lot of the evidence with citations. Again, just reach out if you have trouble finding or downloading these. Good luck with your dissertation! I'm always on the lookout for more studies on croc predation in the fossil record.

​

u/laserdemon1 · 2 pointsr/bigfoot

"Forest Friends of The Night: My True Story of Discovery of the Bigfoot People"

I used to live next door to the guy that wrote it. Not sure how "True" it is, but it is a good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Forest-Friends-Night-Discovery-Bigfoot/dp/1506101658

u/lnfinity · 1 pointr/vegan

I've found myself referring back to The Great Ape Project, Vegan for Life, and Change of Heart the most frequently in my Animal Rights activism.

u/vestigial · 1 pointr/Christianity

Have you read Out Inner Ape? That's where I got a lot of my info from. Fascinating book. Looking at the Amazon page, I see it's about $30... good thing I took it out of the library!

u/MOzarkite · 1 pointr/childfree

Yep! Saw a lovely NatGeo(?) video of one of the poor things being hunted down and torn up and eaten by a chimpanzee troop.

There's actually a book out on the subject of chimpanzee predation on monkeys:Chimpanzee and Red Colobus: The Ecology of Predator and Prey, by Craig Stanford.


ttps://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Red-Colobus-Predator-Foreword/dp/0674007220/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521979876&sr=1-11&keywords=craig+b+stanford


u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/atheism

Actually, he's pointing at a cracker on the ground. He signs for "more" and "eat." Kinda surprised that the trainer didn't realize this. Anyway, Chimps are plenty smart. You should check out Chimpanzee Politics. It's really damn interesting.

u/monswine · 1 pointr/worldbuilding

I saved this post so I could come back to it later when I was more rested. Lots of good suggestions. I thought it might be useful to share some of the nonsense that's in my bookshelves.

Almost Chimpanzee by Jon Cohen

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

Planet Ape by Desmond Morris

The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan

[Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of_Forgotten_Ancestors_(book) by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

Paleofantasy by Marlene Zuk

How To Think Like a Neanderthal by Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge

Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer

History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction by Jacalyn Duffin

The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity by Roy Porter

The Sea & Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine

The History of World Civilization: From Prehistoric Times to The Middle Ages Volume One and Volume Two by Hermann Schneider FYI this guy was a professor in Leipzig during WWII and a member of the Nazi party. Full text in link

Food in History by Reay Tannahill

The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images published by Taschen

Colonies in Space by T.A. Heppenheimer Full text in link

Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That Will Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Some of those are still on my reading list, others are books I've carried with me for over a decade. I've also got many encyclopedias on extinct animals, dinosaurs, and living fauna. Some cryptozoological texts. And I'd also recommend religious texts. Interpreting something that dense can be hard without commentary but exploring non-Christian perspectives is very much "worth it" when it comes to worldbuilding so I've got a copy of Popul Vuh by Dennis Tedlock full text in link, but no pictures and I'm working on finding a good Bhagavad Gita.