A fantastic book!

An engrossing tale of Robert Sapolsky’s adventures and research in Africa includes heartwarming and heartbreaking accounts of his life while studying baboons to learn more about stress-related disease and its relationship to behavior.     In A Primate’s Memoir, stories of baboon love triangles are mingled with descriptions of scientific behavioral research and methods. 

“Nick joined the troop during the unstable years.  He was still and adolescent and you could almost read the contempt on his face as he watched the foibles of his elders playing Keystone Kops….In a fight one day, he trounced the easily intimidated Reuben, who in a gesture of submission, stuck his ass up in the air.  Now, every baboon on earth knows what that means.  It means you give up, your conceding, uncle, no mas.  And every baboon on earth knows that at that pint, the winner is supposed to merely examine your bottom or mount you, or something conventionally demeaning like that, and it’s all over with….at the last second, Nick leans over and gives him a deep slash in the ass with his canines.  Those happy-go lucky stable years were over with a vengeance.” 

In an exciting exploration of behavioral similarities and differences between humans and primates, Sapolsky investigates what mechanisms underlie such behaviors. His accounts of baboon troop social dynamics are entertaining and fascinating. 

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