Chimpanzee Cultures
Edited by RW Wrangham, WC McGrew, FBM De Waal and PG Heltne
424 pages, 41 b/w photos, figs, tabs.
This volume presents the best up-to-date collection of the current state of knowledge of most aspects of chimpanzee behaviour, and it spells out the
dangers now facing the apes and their environments. The study of chimpanzee cultures is crying out for more information from the increasingly isolated
and diminishing communities of these apes. This book shows what has to be done, and where. -- James R. Anderson Animal Behaviour Chimpanzee Cultures
is a title to catch the eye...The aims are made explicit at the outset: to create a discipline of 'cultural primatology' by using the tools to the
cultural sciences and encouraging the use of ethnography in comparing chimpanzee populations...The quality of material on the subject animals is high.
All the papers are original, many containing previously unpublished data, and they do an excellent job of highlighting behavioural diversity...This is
a book chiefly aimed at the scholarly community, yet it carries an important message for all of us. Wild chimpanzee populations continue to decline
through habitat destruction and hunting for bush-meat: the bare bones of this are made clear in the book's final chapter by Jane Goodall. The
dwindling of any species through human short-sightedness is depressing, but chimpanzees present a special case. Chimpanzee Cultures provides ample
evidence that chimpanzees are not simply carbon copies of one another. The species may survive but the extinction of cultures may be proceeding as we
speak. -- Thomas Sambrook Times Higher Education Supplement This excellent volume introduces the state of the art in primatology. Its lessons are
worth learning. There can be no philosophical understanding of what it means to be human apart from understanding what it means to be chimpanzee. --
Barry Allen Common Knowledge This book is, quite simply, a wonderful review of current knowledge of the Pan genus. Quarterly Review of Biology
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