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A tropical rain forest primer for Belize and nearby countries, this authoritative and entertaining book is a must for travelers, students, teachers and conservationists.Written by internationally renowned zoologist Dr. Robert Horwich and ecologist Dr. Jon Lyon, and now in its third printing, A Belizean Rain Forest offers detailed yet easy to read descriptions of the flora, fauna natural history and people of the Community Baboon Sanctuary. Conveniently arranged by topic, this book allows the reader to quickly look up in-depth information on subjects of interest.It gives a thorough understanding of the importance of the rain forest and also presents a community-based method of rain forest conservation. ... Read more

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This volume analyzes the behaviorl interactions between infant and adult male baboons. The result is the first quantitative description of infant-adult male relations for any higher primate, including humans. The idea that emerges is that infant-adult male relations are far more complex than the mere paternal caretaking or exploitation that has previously been assumed, and these relations are specific, long-term, reciprocal, and beneficial to both infants and the adult males. The book also deals with many current topics of interest, including parental investment, kidnapping, altruism, food sharing, agonistic buffering, adoption, and infanticide. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

satisfied
I needed this book really fast for a class and I was happy with how quickly it got here.However, I would have defined the condition as fair, not good. But there was no pages missing or anything so I'm satisfied.

What do Baboons think about?
Do Baboons think and what do they think about?Do they understand that others have their own thoughts, fears, ideas?How does thought work in a social animal?Do you need a society to have true communication?
Baboon Metaphysics is a wonderful book full of information about the social relationships and interactions within Baboon society and some other animals.It is serious, without talking down to the reader, yet also funny sometimes without being silly.We learn about how Baboons deal with stress, grief and anxiety within their network of friends and family and, by learning about them, we can learn about how we deal with the same issues.Language, self-awareness, and empathy are all subjects that are touched on.
Frankly, I learned a lot from this book and enjoyed it at the same time.I suggest it for anybody interested in social evolution, social organizations, and primates in general.

this is not metaphysics
While this book is delightfully written and very interesting, it is not any kind of metaphysics. I was reminded of The Metaphysics of Apes: Negotiating the Animal-Human Boundary as I read it.

If it is metaphysics you crave, then explore Ontology and Philosophy of Mind: The Metaphysics of Consciousness.

Or, from the biological perspective, look at Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are along with Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (Vintage).

An extremely well-written and interesting book.
I picked up this book as almost an afterthought after some picking out some of the more obvious books in primatology. Despite what a certain other author implies in his books on bonobos and chimps, I felt it might be interesting to find what primates who had branched off a little earlier than the Great Apes were like, to get a better picture of our most primal instincts and concerns. I definitely wasn't disappointed in this regard.

This book is everything I could have wished for and more. I would say this is the best book I have on primatology. A close second would be Chimpanzee Politics, which is also very well-written and it's on specifically chimps. This doesn't just stick to baboons, it goes into every single aspect of primatology and beyond. It talks about language, social structure etc., but it has a lot on their excellent baboon studies as well. Every page is choc-a-block with interesting information and the authors are extremely careful not to try to put any bias on their information. It's hard to read at first it's so comprehensive, and yet it's so good that I surprised myself by being drawn into it and reading it first out of all the books I got.

It's entertaining, warm, interesting, logical and extremely comprehensive, again in ALL aspects of what we can learn from primatology. It delivers every part of the argument and what could be argued and tries to put things in a clinical way. Occasionally I got the impression they were even a little too harsh on their primate friends at times, for example concluding that unlike apes, monkeys don't really have a real concept of empathy or theory of mind.

The only caveat I have is that much of the commentary in the "theory of mind" chapters is pretty empty. The authors make such allegations as that if a dog appears confused or doesn't want to do something (such as jump into a car after being commanded to), that it doesn't prove him being "aware" of him not wanting to do it. They also go on and on and on and on and on and on (you get the idea), about whether or not a baboon/monkeys etc. are "self-aware" and have a concept of others and "know" there are others with thoughts and motives of their own. This is a pure and unabashed superiority-complex, determined to put down animals other than ourselves and give reasons as to why they're not really conscious.

Of course the baboons know others have intentions, they look at what each other is doing and calculate and plot and threaten and so on. It's what you yourself have observed and reported. Do WE as HUMANS know others have intentions? Why yes, of course we do as well. We obtain our information about them in the exact same way, just that we have a hugely bigger brain than them (and of course our world is much different now). As is well-known and yet they neglected to mention, the chimpanzee "other person's sight" test only failed on humans and only because chimps often regard humans as all-seeing, all-knowing beings (and who could blame them considering the magical things humans to them to do/know?). The test worked when put against other dominant chimps, ie. yes they CLEARLY saw their intentions. At one point having reduced themselves out of all logical ways in which humans had "awareness" or "metacognition" and baboons didn't, they quoted someone else as saying: "because we can report it", which is in my view a farcical argument and just relies on the fact that (modern) humans have language and baboons do not. They overglamourise the human mind, we don't really have any special magical intellect either apart from looking at individuals' behaviours and today usually using the knowledge we acquired from language.

Thought provoking analysis of baboons
The team of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth has collaborated on numerous publications, including a fine book, "How Monkeys See the World."This represents an ambitious addition to their body of work. A takeoff point is a quotation from Charles Darwin's notebooks, from 1838 (Page 1): "Origin of man now proved--Metaphysic must flourish--He who understands baboon would do more toward metaphysics than Locke." The authors use the Cambridge English Dictionary to define metaphysics (Page 2): "the part of philosophy that is about understanding existence and knowledge."

The authors have been studying baboons for many years.This book summarizes much of their work and indicates the ingenious experiments that they have devised to assess baboons' thought processes and to explore if they possess something like a "theory of mind."They consider, in the process, the extent of "social intelligence" in baboons.At the outset, they propose two general points that guide their analysis of "baboon metaphysics": (1) natural selection leads to a brain for any species that are specialized for the relevant survival needs; (2) baboons have great expertise in navigating social life, since they live in relatively complex social systems.

Key chapters in this volume:

Chapter 3: The dangerous world in which baboons live is well portrayed.Predators pose a danger.Another unfortunate factor of baboon life is infanticide.If a new male enters a troop and becomes dominant, for instance, he may try to kill all young baboons.In this manner, the new male is in a position to begin reproducing very soon with female baboons who lost their infants; he is able, as a result, to increase the amount of his genetic material in the troop through siring his own infants.

Chapters 4 and 5 are critical, as they lay out the very different social worlds of male and female baboons.In either sex, dominance hierarchies are central.Males strive to attain the alpha ranking, that is, being the most dominant male in the troop. Male hierarchies are unstable, leading to considerable social stress.Females' hierarchies are more complex and more stable.Among females, their lineage is important.Each lineage has its own ranking, so one is either born into a top ranking, middle ranking, or low ranking family.Successfully managing to thrive in this social order calls for a high level of social skills.

Baboons, as Chapter 6 emphasizes, have quite good "social knowledge."The understanding of how baboon society works is based on (Pages 118-119) ". . .an innate predisposition to recognize other individuals' ranks and social relationships." Chapter 7 builds on this with a discussion of the social intelligence of baboons, with the authors emphasizing the criticality of baboons' understanding of how to navigate complex social life in a way that facilitates their survival and successful reproduction.The chapter concludes with an interesting discussion of how baboons' social intelligence differs from that of other species, as a result of the evolutionary demands on baboons.

Chapter 8 focuses on the extent to which baboons have a "theory of mind," that is, understanding of the mental states of other baboons.The authors conclude that there might be (page 197) "vague intuition about other animals' intentions," but that there is nothing like a well formed ability among these animals to understand intentions and motivations of others.

The volume concludes in Chapter 12 with a summary discussion of "baboon metaphysics" and with speculation about the relevance of their research for understanding humans. With respect to the former, they conclude that baboons demonstrate that some animals can live in complex societies with a theory of mind and without language--if their mental abilities allow for "making sense" of how to navigate their complex social world. The latter discussion notes what differences could lead to humans having a theory of mind that baboons do not possess.

All in all, a remarkable book.It has value in helping us to understand baboons in their own terms; it helps think about the position of humans in nature and why we are unique (as all species are unique); it provokes reflection on the ability to reflect on oneself and others and try to understand why we behave as we do.Nice touches abound, as illustrated by a charming reference to characters from Jane Austen's novels to make points about individual baboons' behavior.

This is an ambitious work, and there will be questions.The authorsseem to overreach when exploring a theory of mind.It's almost as if they are using a human orientation to study baboons rather than focusing on baboons themselves. In some ways, I'm not sure that the theory of baboons' minds is so crucial as the authors do.The social intelligence part of the picture seems to me more important. Finally, using the philosophical term metaphysics in a baboon context may represent another reach too far.

Nonetheless, these are relatively minor points.The bottom line?A terrific book. . . .

... Read more

Product Description
When it first appeared in the mid-1980s, this book transcended the traditional ethological focus on sexual interactions by analyzing male-female relationships outside the context of mating in a troop of wild baboons. Barbara Smuts used long-term friendships between males and females, documented over a two-year period, to show how social interactions between members of friendly pairs differed from those of other troop mates. Her findings, now enhanced with data from another fifteen years of field studies, suggest that the evolution of male reproductive strategies in baboons can only be understood by considering the relationship between sex and friendship: female baboons prefer to mate with males who have previously engaged in friendly interaction with them and their offspring. Smuts suggests that female choice may promote male investment in other species, and she explores the relevance of her findings for the evolution of male-female relationships in humans. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

haha flange?
Flange?

A made up word from not the 9'oclock news finds its way into a review?

marvelous

The only guide
Despite the title, I'd prefer to have sex and friendship outside of a baboon, but for those brave enough to try, this book is an indispensable guide.

As the great Groucho Marx once said, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, of course, it's too dark to read." And I might add--sex and friendship too.

Excellent
In this marvelous book Smuts draws from years of painstaking field research in which she followed around a flange of chacma baboons in the Mateti Game Park in Zimbabwe. Her findings inspired the plot of When Harry Met Sally. ... Read more

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The editors will address the questions of life history and reproduction by attempting to isolate the various components of reproductive success and fitness in baboons. This requires assembling research interests in morphology, behavior, ecology, and endocrinology of the five subspecies of Papio baboons. By synthesizing studies of reproduction, life history, growth, parenting, ecology, mate choice, and mating success, this volume will shed light on general features of life history traits and reproductive strategies that have made baboons successful. These findings have broad applications to understanding the evolution of complex life history adaptations, such as those characteristic of other primates, and humans in particular. Many of the top researchers on the field are contributing to this volume. ... Read more

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The present volume was written to provide an overview of many diverse areas of biomedical research to which the baboon has made and continues to make important contributions. Each chapter reviews the recent literature on the topic, discusses work in progress, and presents the authors’ vision of research opportunities and likely future contributions of the baboon model to human medicine.

The baboon is a relative newcomer to the repertoire of nonhuman primates used in biomedical research. However, in less than 50 years since its first use in the U.S. it has become one of the most popular laboratory primate species. It is larger than the other widely used monkey species, making it advantageous for many types of experiments and technological developments. It is extraordinarily hardy and highly fecund in captivity. It closely resembles humans in a variety of physiological and disease processes, such as cholesterol metabolism, early stages of atherosclerosis, and alcoholic liver disease. Its chromosomes closely resemble those of humans, and many genes of the two species lie in the same chromosomal order. Among all primates, baboons are the most widely used as models for the genetics of susceptibility to complex diseases and they are the first nonhuman primate for which a framework genetic linkage map was established. In addition, the baboon genome is currently being sequenced, and as a result the utility of this species for biomedical research will be dramatically increased. For all of these reasons, the baboon is certain to continue as one of the premier nonhuman species used in medical research.

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Here comes a drummer. Here comes another.

Hey, it's time for The Percussion of the Apes!

All the primates have a part: monkeys play bongos, chimpanzees playtympani, orangutans bang everythang, gorilla's got a gong!

But when will it be Baboon's turn?

And will he be ready when it comes?

Newcomer Dave Horowitz brings electrifying rhythmic energy to a cast of musically inclined primates and proves in his inimitable way that patience is a virtue. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fun to improvise
I thought this book was ok when I first read it to my son (borrowed from the library) But each time I read it again to him I improvised more and more, and played with the noises and voices I used, pausing quietly when the baboon comes... My son became mesmerized, and I was laughing at myself.So, yeah, its a great book...

captivating and fun
the colors were brilliant and each page was more vivd than the one before.the enticing world of the colors made you want to pick up the book. i read it and instantly fell in love with the story as well.

i cant wait to get the book and share it with my children and their school...

good luck to the author/illustrator...an amazingly talented childrens writer...how refreshing !!

... Read more