Storytelling Apes Primatology Narratives Past And Future Mary Sanders Pollock by Mary Sanders Pollock 9780271066301, 027106630X instant download after payment.

The annals of field primatology are filled with stories about
charismatic animals native to some of the most challenging and remote
areas on earth. There are, for example, the chimpanzees of Tanzania,
whose social and family interactions Jane Goodall has studied for
decades; the mountain gorillas of the Virungas, chronicled first by
George Schaller and then later, more obsessively, by Dian Fossey;
various species of monkeys (Indian langurs, Kenyan baboons, and
Brazilian spider monkeys) studied by Sarah Hrdy, Shirley Strum, Robert
Sapolsky, Barbara Smuts, and Karen Strier; and finally the orangutans of
the Bornean woodlands, whom Biruté Galdikas has observed passionately.
Humans are, after all, storytelling apes. The narrative urge is encoded
in our DNA, along with large brains, nimble fingers, and color vision,
traits we share with lemurs, monkeys, and apes. In Storytelling Apes,
Mary Sanders Pollock traces the development and evolution of
primatology field narratives while reflecting upon the development of
the discipline and the changing conditions within natural primate
habitat.

Like almost every other field primatologist who
followed her, Jane Goodall recognized the individuality of her study
animals: defying formal scientific protocols, she named her chimpanzee
subjects instead of numbering them, thereby establishing a trend. For
Goodall, Fossey, Sapolsky, and numerous other scientists whose works are
discussed in Storytelling Apes, free-living primates became
fully realized characters in romances, tragedies, comedies, and
never-ending soap operas. With this work, Pollock shows readers with a
humanist perspective that science writing can have remarkable literary
value, encourages scientists to share their passions with the general
public, and inspires the conservation community.