When Shirley C. Strum first set out in 1972 to do graduate work with baboons in Kenya, conventional wisdom had it that primate society, epitomized by monkeys such as baboons, was based on aggression and ruled by the males, their brute force and their dominance hierarchy. But her absorbing chronicle of fifteen years spent observing a troop of baboons has revealed remarkable new aspects of animal behavior.

When Shirley C. Strum first set out in 1972 to do graduate work with baboons in Kenya, conventional wisdom had it that primate society, epitomized by monkeys such as baboons, was based on aggression and ruled by the males, their brute force and their dominance hierarchy. But her absorbing chronicle of fifteen years spent observing a troop of baboons has revealed remarkable new aspects of animal behavior.