Vernon Reynolds - Böcker

Unlike humans, who came down from the trees and developed bipedal locomotion, chimpanzees have remained in the original habitat of our ancestors: the tropical rainforests of Africa.In this book, Vernon Reynolds describes in detail the work of a large number of students and senior researchers on the wild chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest Reserve in Western Uganda. He presents a coherent and in-depth account of one chimpanzee community of more than 60 individuals living in the Sonso area in the middle of the Budongo Forest, which he and his colleagues have studied intensively over the last 15 years. The chimpanzees have never been provisioned and live in an entirely natural state. Reynolds describes their forest habitat, their diet and culture, their social organization and behaviour, their diseases, and the threats to them that derive from the actions of people in the surrounding villages, the most serious of these being the presence of snares set by hunters to catch small antelopes and pigs.As founder and head of the Budongo Forest Project, Professor Reynolds has been responsible for compiling the numerous publications, reports, and dissertations written about these chimpanzees. In this book, he combines these new and often unpublished studies with past publications about Budongo Forest. Where appropriate, he also compares the Budongo chimpanzees with wild chimpanzees studied at other sites across Africa. The result is the most comprehensive account of the Budongo chimpanzees ever published, with a wealth of referenced material that will serve as a source of information for many years to come.

From galagos to gorillas, the primates of western Uganda comprise a very di­ verse collection of species. Western Uganda has a long history of primatological research extending back to the publications of the Uganda Virus Institute in 1947 and even to the notable first encounters of Count Beringe with moun­ tain gorillas in 1913. Many forested areas of Uganda (Figure i) have been the focus of research continuously since 1970, and thus western Uganda has a cen­ tral place in primatology that it maintains to the present day. In this book, we present a series of new, unpublished scientific accounts of a selection of the species in the region, each chapter focusing on one or more particular charac­ teristics of the species concerned. The book falls naturally into four sections. First, we introduce the primates of western Uganda, with a chapter on their tax­ onomy. We have left authors to follow the taxonomic terminology with which they are most comfortable, but present this first chapter to reflect recent devel­ opments in the understanding of taxonomic relationships among the Ugandan primates. Second, we present a section with an ecological focus, followed by a collection of chapters on behavior and physiology. Finally the focus shifts to conservation. Chimpanzees and gorillas have always attracted a lot of interest both among the general public and among researchers; consequently, this interest is reflected in the present volume.

Language is just one particularly highly developed form of primate communication. Recent years have seen increased attention to other forms: studies of animals in the wild, efforts to teach sign language to apes. This volume reflects perspectives from a variety of disciplines on the nature and function of primate signalling systems. Monkeys and apes, like people, live in a world in which they are constantly receiving and transmitting information. How can we interpret the ways in which they process it without imposing our own language-based categorizations? The problem is partly scientific, partly conceptual: that is, partly concerned with what language is. The authors' findings and insights will be of interest to a broad group of primatologists, linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers.

Fertility in animals reflects access to scarce resources, such as food and territory. In humans the situation is more complex. Patterns of breast feeding, contraception and ideas about age at marriage and desired family size all affect fertility. The relation between these and access to scarce resources such as housing and employment, via income, education and other factors that affect status, is explored. In this book, the gap between socio-ecology and population demography is bridged, by showing how animals and humans adjust their fertility to environmental conditions.

Fertility in animals reflects access to scarce resources, such as food and territory. In humans the situation is more complex. Patterns of breast feeding, contraception and ideas about age at marriage and desired family size all affect fertility. The relation between these and access to scarce resources such as housing and employment, via income, education and other factors that affect status, is explored. In this book, the gap between socio-ecology and population demography is bridged, by showing how animals and humans adjust their fertility to environmental conditions.

This book is about the social life of monkeys, apes and humans. Its central theme is the importance of social information and knowledge to a full understanding of primate social behaviour and organisation. Using this perspective, the authors seek to demonstrate a continuity between human and non-human society that is often not recognised elsewhere in the literature. Topics covered include: an overview of the contexts of behaviour; a comparison of blind strategies and tactical decision-making; social cognition; a review of intentionalist interpretations of behaviour; kinship; language and its social implications; and the constraints of culture. Primate Behaviour will be of interest to senior undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to researchers in the fields of biological and social anthropology, primatology, psychology, behavioural science and evolutionary biology.