Download or read book Among Orangutans written by Carel van Schaik and published by teNeues. This book was released on 2004 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The local people know him as the "Man of the Forest," who refused to speak for fear of being put to work. And indeed the bear-like Sumatran orangutan, with his moon face, lanky arms, and shaggy red hair, does seem uncannily human; one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, the orangutan may have much to tell us about the origins of human intelligence, technology, and culture. In this book one of the world's leading experts on Sumatran orangutans, working in collaboration with nature photographer Perry van Duijnhoven, takes us deep into the disappearing world of these captivating primates. In a narrative that is part adventure, part field journal, part call to conscience, Carel van Schaik introduces us to the colorful characters and complex lives of the orangutans who inhabit the vanishing forests of Sumatra. In compelling words and pictures, we come to know the personalities and temperaments of our primate cousins as they go about their days: building double-decker tree nests; using leaves as napkins, gloves, rain hats, and blankets, and sticks as backscratchers and probes; nurturing their infants longer and more intensely than any other nonhuman mammal. Here are the births and deaths, the first use of a tool, the defeat of a rival, the gradual loss of influence that, while fascinating to observe, may also help us to reconstruct human evolution.
Download or read book Wild Man from Borneo written by Robert Cribb and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wild Man from Borneo offers the first comprehensive history of the human-orangutan encounter. Arguably the most humanlike of all the great apes, particularly in intelligence and behavior, the orangutan has been cherished, used, and abused ever since it was first brought to the attention of Europeans in the seventeenth century. The red ape has engaged the interest of scientists, philosophers, artists, and the public at large in a bewildering array of guises that have by no means been exclusively zoological or ecological. One reason for such a long-term engagement with a being found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is that, like its fellow great apes, the orangutan stands on that most uncomfortable dividing line between human and animal, existing, for us, on what has been called “the dangerous edge of the garden of nature.” Beginning with the scientific discovery of the red ape more than three hundred years ago, this work goes on to examine the ways in which its human attributes have been both recognized and denied in science, philosophy, travel literature, popular science, literature, theatre, museums, and film. The authors offer a provocative analysis of the origin of the name “orangutan,” trace how the ape has been recruited to arguments on topics as diverse as slavery and rape, and outline the history of attempts to save the animal from extinction. Today, while human populations increase exponentially, that of the orangutan is in dangerous decline. The remaining “wild men of Borneo” are under increasing threat from mining interests, logging, human population expansion, and the widespread destruction of forests. The authors hope that this history will, by adding to our knowledge of this fascinating being, assist in some small way in their preservation.
Download or read book The Red Ape written by Jeffrey H. Schwartz and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating tour of evolutionary biology that calls into question our implicit social and political commitment to the current theories, offering persuasive evidence that our closest relative is not the gorilla but the orangutan. 16 page black-and-white photo insert. Illustrations.
Download or read book Orang Utans And The Origins Of Human written by James Burnett and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2003-06-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb
Download or read book Orang utan Biology written by Jeffrey H. Schwartz and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1988 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collective works on the orang-utan, from the broader evolutionary perspective to the details of what makes this animal not just unique among humanoids, but distinctive among primates in general.
Download or read book Demonic Males written by Richard W. Wrangham and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1996 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whatever their virtues, men are more violent than women. Why do men kill, rape, and wage war, and what can be done about it? Drawing on the latest discoveries about human evolution and about our closest living relatives, the great apes, "Demonic Males" offers some startling new answers to these questions.
Download or read book The Real Planet of the Apes written by David R. Begun and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astonishing new story of human origins Was Darwin wrong when he traced our origins to Africa? The Real Planet of the Apes makes the explosive claim that it was in Europe, not Africa, where apes evolved the most important hallmarks of our human lineage. In this compelling and accessible book, David Begun, one of the world’s leading paleoanthropologists, transports readers to an epoch in the remote past when the Earth was home to many migratory populations of ape species. Begun draws on the latest astonishing discoveries in the fossil record, as well as his own experiences conducting field expeditions, to offer a sweeping evolutionary history of great apes and humans. He tells the story of how one of the earliest members of our evolutionary group evolved from lemur-like monkeys in the primeval forests of Africa. Begun then vividly describes how, over the next ten million years, these hominoids expanded into Europe and Asia and evolved climbing and hanging adaptations, longer maturation times, and larger brains. As the climate deteriorated in Europe, these apes either died out or migrated south, reinvading the African continent and giving rise to the lineages of African great apes, and, ultimately, humans. Presenting startling new insights, The Real Planet of the Apes fundamentally alters our understanding of human origins.
Download or read book The Mentalities of Gorillas and Orangutans written by Sue Taylor Parker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-08-26 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on the mental abilities of chimpanzees and bonobos has been widely celebrated and used in reconstructions of human evolution. In contrast, less attention has been paid to the abilities of gorillas and orangutans. This 1999 volume aims to help complete the picture of hominoid cognition by bringing together the work on gorillas and orangutans and setting it in comparative perspective. The introductory chapters set the evolutionary context for comparing cognition in gorillas and orangutans to that of chimpanzees, bonobos and humans. The remaining chapters focus primarily on the kinds and levels of intelligence displayed by orangutans and gorillas compared to other great apes, including performances in the classic domains of tool use and tool making, imitation, self-awareness, social communication and symbol use. All those wanting more information on the mental abilities of these sometimes neglected, but important primates will find this book a treasure trove.
Download or read book What the Bones Tell Us written by Jeffrey H. Schwartz and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeffrey Schwartz, professor of physical anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, ranges from digs in the Negev Desert through Africa and Europe to the local coroner's office to explain how interpretations of the past are made. What counts is the data and the context in which the evidence is analyzed. Along the way the author constructs a new hominid family tree to take account of recent assessments of human evolution. The author, part of the team that recently unearthed burial urns from the ancient city of Carthage, exposes the inner workings of archeology and anthropology, illustrating what can be learned from fossils and fragments of ancient cultures and civilizations. Because every living thing on earth will have had a single, unique history, whether it be the life of an individual, of a civilization, a species, or a diverse evolutionary group, "the discovery," writes the author, "is less a matter of unearthing a fossil or sequencing a species' DNA than it is of interpreting data in an attempt to reconstruct the missing pieces of the puzzle." Bone fragments can be used not only to identify animal species but also to tell us of their past history. Studies of bones can also reveal the land's past capacity to sustain animal life, whether domestic or wild. Frequently the physical evidence overturns sacred historical writings (and occasionally such evidence is suppressed). And when the author misidentifies what turns out to be an incomplete human specimen for the coroner, we come to understand just how easily incomplete data can deceive us. After reading this fascinating and authoritative work, any reader will be better equipped to evaluate the evidence for various new theories about our origins and evolution. Another value of this pioneering book is its deep insight into scientific infighting and the competing speculations about evolutionary history. Scientists, however worldly, discover little truths - at best useful models of the past (good until some better data come along). Their theories, and the bases for them, must be accessible to others for scrutiny and possible rejection; that's the essence of the scientific method and this enormously thoughtful work.
Download or read book The Complete World of Human Evolution written by Chris Stringer and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-07-26 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Complete World of Human Evolution By Chris Stringer
Download or read book Apes and Human Evolution written by Russell H. Tuttle and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-17 with total page 1089 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this masterwork, Russell H. Tuttle synthesizes a vast research literature in primate evolution and behavior to explain how apes and humans evolved in relation to one another, and why humans became a bipedal, tool-making, culture-inventing species distinct from other hominoids. Along the way, he refutes the influential theory that men are essentially killer apes—sophisticated but instinctively aggressive and destructive beings. Situating humans in a broad context, Tuttle musters convincing evidence from morphology and recent fossil discoveries to reveal what early primates ate, where they slept, how they learned to walk upright, how brain and hand anatomy evolved simultaneously, and what else happened evolutionarily to cause humans to diverge from their closest relatives. Despite our genomic similarities with bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, humans are unique among primates in occupying a symbolic niche of values and beliefs based on symbolically mediated cognitive processes. Although apes exhibit behaviors that strongly suggest they can think, salient elements of human culture—speech, mating proscriptions, kinship structures, and moral codes—are symbolic systems that are not manifest in ape niches. This encyclopedic volume is both a milestone in primatological research and a critique of what is known and yet to be discovered about human and ape potential.
Download or read book Chimpanzees and Human Evolution written by Martin N. Muller and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-27 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowledge of chimpanzees in the wild has expanded dramatically in recent years. This comprehensive volume, edited by Martin Muller, Richard Wrangham, and David Pilbeam, brings together scientists who are leading a revolution to discover and explain what is unique about humans, by studying their closest living relatives. Their observations and conclusions have the potential to transform our understanding of human evolution. Chimpanzees offer scientists an unmatched view of what distinguishes humanity from its apelike ancestors. Based on evidence from the hominin fossil record and extensive morphological, developmental, and genetic data, Chimpanzees and Human Evolution makes the case that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was chimpanzee-like. It most likely lived in African rainforests around eight million years ago, eating fruit and walking on its knuckles. Readers will learn why chimpanzees are a better model for the last common ancestor than bonobos, gorillas, or orangutans. A thorough chapter-by-chapter analysis reveals which key traits we share with chimpanzees and which appear to be distinctive to Homo sapiens, and shows how understanding chimpanzees helps us account for the evolution of human uniqueness. Traits surveyed include social behaviors and structures, mating systems, diet, hunting practices, tool use, culture, cognition, and communication. Edited by three of primatology’s most renowned experts, with contributions from 32 scholars drawing on decades of field research, Chimpanzees and Human Evolution provides readers with detailed up-to-date information on what we can infer about our chimpanzee-like ancestors and points the way forward for the next generation of discoveries.
Download or read book Decolonizing Extinction written by Juno Salazar Parreñas and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Decolonizing Extinction Juno Salazar Parreñas ethnographically traces the ways in which colonialism, decolonization, and indigeneity shape relations that form more-than-human worlds at orangutan rehabilitation centers on Borneo. Parreñas tells the interweaving stories of wildlife workers and the centers' endangered animals while demonstrating the inseparability of risk and futurity from orangutan care. Drawing on anthropology, primatology, Southeast Asian history, gender studies, queer theory, and science and technology studies, Parreñas suggests that examining workers’ care for these semi-wild apes can serve as a basis for cultivating mutual but unequal vulnerability in an era of annihilation. Only by considering rehabilitation from perspectives thus far ignored, Parreñas contends, could conservation biology turn away from ultimately violent investments in population growth and embrace a feminist sense of welfare, even if it means experiencing loss and pain.
Download or read book The Great Apes written by Chris Herzfeld and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword / by Jane Goodall -- The uncanniness of similitude : wild men, simians, and hybrid beings -- Skeletons, skins, and skulls : apes in the age of colonial expansion and natural history collections -- Apes as guinea pigs : primates and experimental research -- Great apes in the eyes of scientists : what does it mean to be an ape? -- Apes that think they are human : astronaut apes, painting apes, talking apes -- Conquering the field : pioneers, the quest for origins, and primates -- Socialities, culture, and traditions among primates : when the boundary between humans and apes blurs -- Women and apes : sex, gender, and primatology -- Becoming-human, being-ape
Download or read book The Neglected Ape written by Biruté M.F. Galdikas and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1996-02-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The orangutan is the most highly endangered species of great ape. Orangutans are threatened by deforestation, poaching, the illegal pet trade, and the isolation and fragmen tation of dwindling wild populations. Their conservation is impeded by certain aspects of their ecology (e. g. , a rain forest habitat) and certain features of their life history (e. g. , an eight-to twelve-year interbirth interval). Added to the U. S. Endangered Species List in 1970, the orangutan is now clearly on the road to extinction. The number of wild orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra is currently estimated to have decreased to between 12,300 and 20,571 individuals. Only 2% of original orangutan habitat is protected and some of these areas are now being destroyed. Clearly, attention to ecology, demography, censusing, rehabilitation, and conservation is essential if the orangutan is to survive in the wild beyond the next century. The protection of orangutans is a complex, multifaceted problem, involving such pressing issues as human poverty, overpopulation, and the economic development of Southeast Asia. Although the orangutan has been placed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), more orangutans were sold illegally in Taiwan between 1990 and 1993 than are housed in all the world's zoos. In the past, scientific and public attention has centered on the African apes. For this reason, the sole Asian great ape, the orangutan, has been called the "neglected ape.
Download or read book Primate Evolution and Human Origins written by Russell L. Ciochon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Primate Evolution and Human Origins compiles, for the first time, the major ideas and publications that have shaped our current view of the evolutionary biology of the primates and the origin of the human line. Designed for freshmen-to-graduate students in anthropology, paleontology, and biology, the book is a unique collection of classic papers, culled from the past 20 years of research. It is also an important reference for academicians and researchers, as it covers the entire scope of primate and human evolution (with an emphasis on the fossil record). A comprehensive bibliography cites over 2000 significant articles not found in the main text.
Download or read book Orangutans written by Serge A. Wich and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-07 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes one of our closest relatives, the orangutan, and the only extant great ape in Asia. It is increasingly clear that orangutan populations show extensive variation in behavioural ecology, morphology, life history, and genes. Indeed, on the strength of the latest genetic and morphological evidence, it has been proposed that orangutans actually constitute two species which diverged more than a million years ago - one on the island of Sumatra the other on Borneo, with the latter comprising three subspecies. This book has two main aims. The first is to carefully compare data from every orangutan research site, examining the differences and similarities between orangutan species, subspecies and populations. The second is to develop a theoretical framework in which these differences and similarities can be explained. To achieve these goals the editors have assembled the world's leading orangutan experts to rigorously synthesize and compare the data, quantify the similarities or differences, and seek to explain them. Orangutans is the first synthesis of orangutan biology to adopt this novel, comparative approach. It analyses and compares the latest data, developing a theoretical framework to explain morphological, life history, and behavioural variation. Intriguingly, not all behavioural differences can be attributed to ecological variation between and within the two islands; relative rates of social learning also appear to have been influential. The book also emphasizes the crucial impact of human settlement on orangutans and looks ahead to the future prospects for the survival of critically endangered natural populations.