Michael A. Huffman - Böcker

The Arashiyama group of Japanese macaques holds a distinguished place in primatology as one of the longest continuously studied non-human primate populations in the world. The resulting long-term data provide a unique resource for researchers, allowing them to move beyond cross-sectional studies to tackle larger issues involving individual, matrilineal and group histories. This book presents an overview of the scope and magnitude of research topics and management efforts that have been conducted on this population for several decades, covering not only the original troop living around Kyoto, Japan, but also the two subgroups that were translocated to Texas, USA and Montreal, Canada. The chapters encompass topics including life history, sexual, social and cultural behaviour and ecology, giving an insight into the range of current primatological research. The contributors underscore the historic value of the Arashiyama macaques and showcase new and significant research findings that highlight their continuing importance to primatology.

Anyone who has spent an extended period in the tropics has an idea, through caring for others or first-hand experience, just what it is like to be a primate parasite host. Monkeys and apes often share parasites with humans, for example the HIV viruses which evolved from related viruses of chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys, and so understanding the ecology of infectious diseases in non-human primates is of paramount importance. Furthermore, there is accumulating evidence that environmental change may promote contact between humans and non-human primates and increase the possibility of sharing infectious disease. Written for academic researchers, this book addresses these issues and provides up-to-date information on the methods of study, natural history and ecology/theory of the exciting field of primate parasite ecology.

The Arashiyama group of Japanese macaques holds a distinguished place in primatology as one of the longest continuously studied non-human primate populations in the world. The resulting long-term data provide a unique resource for researchers, allowing them to move beyond cross-sectional studies to tackle larger issues involving individual, matrilineal and group histories. This book presents an overview of the scope and magnitude of research topics and management efforts that have been conducted on this population for several decades, covering not only the original troop living around Kyoto, Japan, but also the two subgroups that were translocated to Texas, USA and Montreal, Canada. The chapters encompass topics including life history, sexual, social and cultural behaviour and ecology, giving an insight into the range of current primatological research. The contributors underscore the historic value of the Arashiyama macaques and showcase new and significant research findings that highlight their continuing importance to primatology.

Anyone who has spent an extended period in the tropics has an idea, through caring for others or first-hand experience, just what it is like to be a primate parasite host. Monkeys and apes often share parasites with humans, for example the HIV viruses which evolved from related viruses of chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys, and so understanding the ecology of infectious diseases in non-human primates is of paramount importance. Furthermore, there is accumulating evidence that environmental change may promote contact between humans and non-human primates and increase the possibility of sharing infectious disease. Written for academic researchers, this book addresses these issues and provides up-to-date information on the methods of study, natural history and ecology/theory of the exciting field of primate parasite ecology.

The concept of this book arises from a symposium entitled “Human-Macaque Interactions: Traditional and Modern Perspectives on Cooperation and Conflict ” organized at the 23rd Congress of the International Primatological Society, that was held in Kyoto in September 2010. The symposium highlighted the many aspects of human-macaque relations and some of the participants were invited to contribute to this volume. The volume will include about 11 chapters by a variety of international authors and some excerpts from published literature that illustrate cultural notions of macaques. Contributions from invited authors will engage with four main perspectives – traditional views of macaques, cooperative relationships between humans and macaques, current scenarios of human-macaque conflict, and how living with and beside humans has affected macaques. Authors will address these concerns through their research findings and reviews of their work on the Asian, and the lone African, macaques. ​

Contributions from invited authors will engage with four main perspectives – traditional views of macaques, cooperative relationships between humans and macaques, current scenarios of human-macaque conflict, and how living with and beside humans has affected macaques.

This book introduces to the reader unfamiliar with primatology in Japan three research projects representative of the unique multidisciplinary approach carried out by scientists at Kyoto University, the country’s premier institution for primate studies. The projects are all aimed at understanding the age-old questions, where did we come from, and what makes us unique or similar to our primate ancestors? The first chapter, by Naofumi Nakagawa, focuses on the cultural diversity of social behavior in the Japanese macaque. This chapter reviews research on primate culture, in particular the work on Japanese macaques, then presents what is arguably the first example of a culturally transmitted social convention in the species, called “hug-hug”. The second chapter, by Michael A. Huffman, introduces our current knowledge of self-medication in primates, based largely on a long-term study of wild chimpanzees at Kyoto University’s longest ongoing chimpanzee field in Africa, Mahale, in Tanzania. The suite of behavioral adaptations to parasite infections in chimpanzees is compared with our current knowledge of self-medication in other primates and other animal species. The third chapter, by Yasuhiro Go, Hiroo Imai, and Masaki Tomonaga, describes the ambitious efforts to combine cognitive science and genomics into a new discipline called “comparative cognitive genomics”. This chapter provides an overview of recent advancements in chimpanzee comparative cognition, the construction of a chimpanzee genomic database, and comparative genomic studies at the individual level, looking into factors affecting personality and individuality.