Download or read book Life With Darwin and other baboons written by Fransje van Riel and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ... baboons are neither devils nor saints but animals who like us have very individual personalities, experience a wide range of emotions and possess a capacity for reasoning.' These are the words of Kobie Kruger, best selling wildlife author, in her foreword to Life with Darwin. Of all the primates in Africa, the Chacma Baboon has arguably received the least attention in terms of comprehensive behavioural studies. Life with Darwin is an account of the work of Karin Saks who, through fostering orphaned baby baboons and attempting to rehabilitate them back into the wild, had the opportunity to observe and record the activities of a number of wild baboon troops. Through her daily interaction with them she brings fresh perspectives to our knowledge of an animal society that is both complex and well ordered. It is a fresh and accessible look at a species that has not always been sympathetically regarded, and its insights go a long way towards redressing this attitude.
Download or read book Life with Darwin and Other Baboons written by Franje Van Riel and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the work of Karin Saks who, through fostering orphaned baby baboons and attempting to rehabilitate them back into the wild, had the opportunity to observe and record the activities of a number of wild baboon troops. Through her daily interaction with them she brings fresh perspectives to our knowledge of an animal society that is both complex and well ordered. 2003.
Download or read book Baboon Metaphysics written by Dorothy L. Cheney and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals.
Download or read book Baboon Metaphysics written by Dorothy L. Cheney and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1838 Charles Darwin jotted in a notebook, “He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.” Baboon Metaphysics is Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth’s fascinating response to Darwin’s challenge. Cheney and Seyfarth set up camp in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where they could intimately observe baboons and their social world. Baboons live in groups of up to 150, including a handful of males and eight or nine matrilineal families of females. Such numbers force baboons to form a complicated mix of short-term bonds for mating and longer-term friendships based on careful calculations of status and individual need. But Baboon Metaphysics is concerned with much more than just baboons’ social organization—Cheney and Seyfarth aim to fully comprehend the intelligence that underlies it. Using innovative field experiments, the authors learn that for baboons, just as for humans, family and friends hold the key to mitigating the ill effects of grief, stress, and anxiety. Written with a scientist’s precision and a nature-lover’s eye, Baboon Metaphysics gives us an unprecedented and compelling glimpse into the mind of another species. “The vivid narrative is like a bush detective story.”—Steven Poole, Guardian “Baboon Metaphysics is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives. . . . It is exactly what such a book should be—full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions.”—Alison Jolly, Science “Cheney and Seyfarth found that for a baboon to get on in life involves a complicated blend of short-term relationships, friendships, and careful status calculations. . . . Needless to say, the ensuing political machinations and convenient romantic dalliances in the quest to become numero uno rival the bard himself.”—Science News “Cheney and Seyfarth’s enthusiasm is obvious, and their knowledge is vast and expressed with great clarity. All this makes Baboon Metaphysics a captivating read. It will get you thinking—and maybe spur you to travel to Africa to see it all for yourself.”—Asif A. Ghazanfar, Nature “Through ingenious playback experiments . . . Cheney and Seyfarth have worked out many aspects of what baboons used their minds for, along with their limitations. Reading a baboon’s mind affords an excellent grasp of the dynamics of baboon society. But more than that, it bears on the evolution of the human mind and the nature of human existence.”—Nicholas Wade, New York Times
Download or read book My Life With Leopards Graham Cooke s Story written by Fransje van Riel and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-09-03 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human emotion and animal instinct meet poignantly when two six-week-old leopard cubs become the charge of 22-year-old game ranger Graham Cooke at Londolozi. Staying with the cubs in an unfenced bush camp surrounded by lions, hyenas and other leopards, he must first gain their trust before he begins to guide them towards release in the wild. It takes weeks of patience and gentleness for Graham to be accepted into the cubs' small family unit and to find ways of communicating with the young leopards as he slowly begins to introduce them to their new environment. Graham finds himself drawn more to the wary little female than her easy-going brother, but over time both cubs come to recognise him as their protector. They form a bond of friendship through which he can gain unparalleled insights into their development and behaviour. When, a year later, the cubs are relocated to the Zambian wilderness, Graham faces the hardest task of all: to set free the young animals he has become so devoted to so that they can return to a wild existence where he is unable to control their fate.
Download or read book Monkeyluv written by Robert M. Sapolsky and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-10-10 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of original essays by a leading neurobiologist and primatologist share the author's insights into behavioral biology, including discussion of the physiology of genes and the factors that shape human social interaction.
Download or read book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex written by Charles Darwin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 964 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin's second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the first printing of the first edition (1871), not previously available in paperback. The work is divided into two parts. Part One marshals behavioral and morphological evidence to argue that humans evolved from other animals. Darwin shoes that human mental and emotional capacities, far from making human beings unique, are evidence of an animal origin and evolutionary development. Part Two is an extended discussion of the differences between the sexes of many species and how they arose as a result of selection. Here Darwin lays the foundation for much contemporary research by arguing that many characteristics of animals have evolved not in response to the selective pressures exerted by their physical and biological environment, but rather to confer an advantage in sexual competition. These two themes are drawn together in two final chapters on the role of sexual selection in humans. In their Introduction, Professors Bonner and May discuss the place of The Descent in its own time and relation to current work in biology and other disciplines.
Download or read book Reproduction and Fitness in Baboons Behavioral Ecological and Life History Perspectives written by Larissa Swedell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-11-25 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together current research on the behavior, ecology, reproduction, and life history of baboons of the genus Papio, shedding light on what makes baboons successful. The book focuses on issues such as infanticide, mating strategies and investment, hybridization and genetics. The findings have broad applications to understanding the evolution of complex life history adaptations in other primates, and of humans in particular.
Download or read book A Primate s Memoir written by Robert M. Sapolsky and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky, a foremost science writer and recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, tells the mesmerizing story of his twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of savanna baboons. "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 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 Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes 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.
Download or read book After We Said Goodbye written by Sean Davison and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sean Davison made headlines when he was arrested in New Zealand for matricide. The story that emerged - how he helped his ailing mother to die - is the subject of his affecting book, Before We Say Goodbye. This second book, After We Said Goodbye, takes up the story from there: his arrest, trial and sentencing and the dramatic events that followed after this softspoken, unassuming man took the most fateful decision of his life; one that tore open family rifts and posed fundamental questions about life and his choices. With unwavering frankness, Davison faces his demons: Should he have done what he did? Ought he to have exposed his family? Was it the right thing to self-sensor the first edition of his book and conceal the fact that he had administered the morphine? And how should he come to terms with his sibling who had leaked the uncensored manuscript that lead to his arrest? It is estimated that huge numbers of people die through assisted suicide, and the author has become a vocal activist for the right to die in dignity.
Download or read book My Friends the Baboon written by Eugène Nielen Marais and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Second Nature written by Jonathan Balcombe and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With vivid stories and entertaining anecdotes, Balcombe gives the human pedestal a strong shake while opening the door into the inner lives of the animals themselves.
Download or read book Sociality Hierarchy Health written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociality, Hierarchy, Health: Comparative Biodemography is a collection of papers that examine cross-species comparisons of social environments with a focus on social behaviors along with social hierarchies and connections, to examine their effects on health, longevity, and life histories. This report covers a broad spectrum of nonhuman animals, exploring a variety of measures of position in social hierarchies and social networks, drawing links among these factors to health outcomes and trajectories, and comparing them to those in humans. Sociality, Hierarchy, Health revisits both the theoretical underpinnings of biodemography and the empirical findings that have emerged over the past two decades.
Download or read book Biological Exuberance written by Bruce Bagemihl and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2000-04-10 with total page 1549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Publishers Weekly Best Book One of the New York Public Library's "25 Books to Remember" for 1999 Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, filled with fascinating facts and astonishing descriptions of animal behavior, Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance is a landmark book that will change forever how we look at nature. Homosexuality in its myriad forms has been scientifically documented in more than 450 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and other animals worldwide. Biological Exuberance is the first comprehensive account of the subject, bringing together accurate, accessible, and nonsensationalized information. Drawing upon a rich body of zoological research spanning more than two centuries, Bagemihl shows that animals engage in all types of nonreproductive sexual behavior. Sexual and gender expression in the animal world displays exuberant variety, including same-sex courtship, pair-bonding, sex, and co-parenting—even instances of lifelong homosexual bonding in species that do not have lifelong heterosexual bonding. Part 1, "A Polysexual, Polygendered World," begins with a survey of homosexuality, transgender, and nonreproductive heterosexuality in animals and then delves into the broader implications of these findings, including a valuable perspective on human diversity. Bagemihl also examines the hidden assumptions behind the way biologists look at natural systems and suggests a fresh perspective based on the synthesis of contemporary scientific insights with traditional knowledge from indigenous cultures. Part 2, "A Wondrous Bestiary," profiles more than 190 species in which scientific observers have noted homosexual or transgender behavior. Each profile is a verbal and visual "snapshot" of one or more closely related bird or mammal species, containing all the documentation required to support the author's often controversial conclusions.
Download or read book Johannesburg Then and Now written by Marc Latilla and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In less than a century, the jumble of shabby tents and lean-tos that constituted Johannesburg’s first settlement has grown into a modern metropolis of towering office buildings, high-rise apartments and sprawling suburbs. Its rapid development has been in no small measure the result of the fabulous wealth that lay in the goldrich deposits of the now-famous Witwatersrand basin. The story of gold is also the story of Johannesburg, and in a fascinating series of photographic juxtapositions, Johannesburg Then and Now chronicles the city’s expansion from dusty mining camp to economic powerhouse. Rare archival photographs, dating from the 1880s to the 1940s, are contrasted with vivid scenes of the modern city, providing a hitherto untold portrait of the Place of Gold. Where possible, the modern-day photographs have been shot from the same locations as the originals. Detailed captions provide fascinating comparisons between the old and the new, while also illuminating features that have remained the same. Johannesburg Then and Now is a superb collection of images and text that will delight both local residents and visitors. Sales points: Fascinating portrait of early and modern Johannesburg; Rare archival photographs (1880–1950), many never published before; Informative and well-researched text; Beautiful and elegantly designed coffee-table book; Excellent gift and keepsake; Companion volume to the successful Cape Town Then and Now.
Download or read book African Books in Print written by and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 854 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sex and Friendship in Baboons written by Barbara B. Smuts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Those who have been privileged to watch baboons long enough to know them as individuals and who have learned to interpret some of their more subtle interactions will attest that the rapid flow of baboon behavior can at times be overwhelming. In fact, some of the most sophisticated and influential observation methods for sampling vertebrate social behavior grew out of baboon studies, invented by scientists who were trying to cope with the intricacies of baboon behavior. Barbara Smuts' eloquent study of baboons reveals a new depth to their behavior and extends the theories needed to account for it.While adhering to the most scrupulous methodological strictures, the author maintains an open research strategy--respecting her subjects by approaching them with the open mind of an ethnographer and immersing herself in the complexities of baboon social life before formulating her research design, allowing her to detect and document a new level of subtlety in their behavior. At the Gilgil site, described in this book, she could stroll and sit within a few feet of her subjects. By maintaining such proximity she was able to watch and listen to intimate exchanges within the troop; she was able, in other words, to shift the baboons well along the continuum from ""subject"" to ""informant."" By doing so she has illuminated new networks of special relationships in baboons. This empirical contribution accompanies theoretical insights that not only help to explain many of the inconsistencies of previous studies but also provide the foundation for a whole new dimension in the study of primate behavior: analysis oft he dynamics of long-term, intimate relationships and their evolutionary significance.At every stage of research human observers have underestimated the baboon. These intelligent, curious, emotional, and long-lived creatures are capable of employing stratagems and forming relationships that are not easily detected by traditional research methods. In the process
