Primatology: monkey bromance

Male macaques form strong social bonds that enhance competitive ability and mating success, belying theoretical predictions that mate competition should prevent males from cooperating with one another.     

Primatology: the beginning

The journal Primates was founded by Kinji Imanishi (1902–1992) in 1957: It is the oldest and longest-running international primatology journal in the world. In this series of dialogues between Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Editor-in-Chief of Primates and the General Director of the Japan Monkey Centre (JMC) and Juichi Yamagiwa, former Editor-in-Chief of Primates and the Museum Director of the JMC, we look back at the achievements of our spiritual ancestors in primate research and talk about the back story of Imanishi and his fellow primatologists: founding the JMC as a research institute focused on primates and launching this journal. What was their motivation? What challenges did they face? What is their continued influence on the field right up to the present? What will be the legacy of our influence on the discipline?     

Advances in Primatology

Book reviewed in this article:
Comparative Primate Biology.-D. R. Swindler and J. Erwin (eds). Alan R. Liss.
Biological Metaphor and Cladistic Classikation. An Interdisciplinary Perspective.-Henry M. Hoenigswald and Linda F. Wiener.
Systematics and Evolution: A Matter of Diversity.-P. Hovenkamp.     

Primatology in China

China is one of the countries with the greatest diversity of nonhuman primate species: 22 species with 30 subspecies, in 6 genera and 3 families. Primatology in China started in 1862, but fruitful study began only in the 1950s. More than 2,000 academic papers have been published, covering systematics, evolution, ecology, etho-ecology, conservation, reproduction and neuroscience. We review primatology in China over the past century, concentrating mostly on systematics, etho-ecology, conservation and reproduction. We aim to share this information with international colleagues and to seek possibilities for collaboration in the future.     

The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology

The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology . William C. McGrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 248 pp.     

Moral ape philosophy

Our closest relative the chimpanzee seems to display proto-moral behavior. Some scholars emphasize the similarities between humans and chimpanzees, others some key differences. This paper aims is to formulate a set of intermediate conditions between a sometimes helpful chimpanzee and moral man. I specify these intermediate conditions as requirements for the chimpanzees, and for each requirement I take on a verificationist stance and ask what the empirical conditions that satisfy it would be. I ask what would plausibly count as the behavioral correlate of each requirement, when implemented. I take a philosophical look at morality using the chimpanzees as a prism. We will talk of propositional attitudes, rationality and reason in relation to the chimps. By means of the chimps I intend to arrive at a notion of objective morality as conceived from a first person point of view in terms of propositional attitudes and reasons.     

Great ape societies

Edited by W.C. McGrew, Linda F. Marchant, and Toshisada Nishida. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1996. 328 pp. ISBN 0-521-55494-2. $64.95 (cloth). © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

African ape ancestry

It is commonly believed that the australopithecines are more closely related to humans than to African apes. This view is hardly compatible with the biomolecular data which place theHomo/Pan split at the beginning of the australopithecine period. Nothing in the fossil hominid morphology precludes the possibility that some australopithecines were ancestral to gorillas or chimpanzees and others to humans.