Among Orangutans: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Perry van Duijnhoven (Photographer)
Key Phrases: flanged males, orangutan density, transitional swamp, Southeast Asia, Old World, Alas River (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

In this book, Carel van Schaik, a highly regarded Dutch primatologist now at Duke University, concludes that "intelligence is ... socially constructed during development." This won't surprise you--until you realize that he is referring not to humans but to orangutans, the large red apes of south Asia. Van Schaik proposes that the discovery of orangutan culture can provide a resolution to a long-standing puzzle: Why are apes so smart? Perhaps the complexities of great ape social relationships selected for large brains. But orangutans challenge this "social intelligence" hypothesis: in the wild, they mostly travel about by themselves, yet they are at least as smart as chimpanzees. Van Schaik thinks that social factors are indeed pivotal in explaining orangutan intelligence, but not in the way proposed by the social intelligence hypothesis. In a beautifully written, compelling narrative that reads like a detective story, he weaves together several threads of evidence to argue that orangutan intelligence is intimately related to technological innovations that are passed down through social learning. Before hearing about the details of orangutan culture, we accompany van Schaik into the fetid, mosquito-ridden swamp forests of western Sumatra (succinctly described as human hell--but orangutan heaven). Through the large number of outstanding color photographs, we meet many of the 100 orangutans his team recognized individually. They are handsome creatures with long red hair, expressive faces and round eyes that gaze out of the photographs with keen awareness. Orangutans do something clever that other great apes don't do: they use leaves to make rain hats and leakproof roofs over their sleeping nests. But until recently, there was scant evidence of other kinds of toolmaking. At van Schaik's site, tools were common, and he documents in detail how the orangutans fashion tools out of twigs. They use some tools to fish for ants or termites, while they skillfully manipulate others to get at scrumptious seeds protected by razor-sharp hairs. At first glance, these tools do not seem to reflect advanced cognitive skills, but on closer inspection van Schaik found that each tool is carefully crafted to match the precise needs of a given situation. And like chimpanzees, orangutans sometimes make tools for later use, an apparent example of conscious planning. How do we know that such feats represent culture? The argument is complex, but in brief, orangutans' use of tools on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo varies geographically in ways that cannot be explained by ecological or genetic differences between populations. Instead these differences are best explained by variation in sociability, as well as by the locations of geographic barriers preventing cultural diffusion between populations. In most places, intense feeding competition prevents orangutans from forming groups, and in these situations, tool use is rudimentary or absent. But swamp forests are highly productive, allowing van Schaik's orangutans to associate a lot. As a result, youngsters spend many hours closely watching tolerant elders make and use tools. After about seven years of learning and practice, they, too, become skillful tool users. Because we already knew that material cultures vary among chimpanzee populations, why is the discovery of orangutan culture so important? Van Schaik provides three reasons: First, the existence of culture in orangutans can explain why they are so smart--something the social intelligence hypothesis cannot do. Second, orangutan ancestors split from the great ape lineage as long as 15 million years ago, leading van Schaik to argue that the common ancestor of all great apes (including humans) had culture at least that far back in time. If so, then the roots of human culture are much older than previously thought. Third, if the ancestor of all living great apes had the capacity for material culture, then the origins of culture must be sought in older (nonderived) traits that characterized these ancient apes. This brings us back to the question we began with: How did apes get to be so smart? Van Schaik finds the answer in a surprising place: the tops of the trees. Because ancestral apes were both large-bodied and arboreal, they were much less vulnerable to predation than other mammals of their time. According to life history theory, reduced adult mortality selects for slow life histories, which in turn allow the long investment required to grow large brains and the long adult life span that makes growing them worthwhile. Apes (along with some whales and elephants) have the slowest life histories of any nonhuman mammals, and orangutans are the "slowest" apes. Infants are not weaned until they are seven, and in the wild, orangutans may live into their sixties. Thus, apes began as slow-moving, slow-growing, slow-aging animals with quick minds. Once these minds began to invent tools, van Schaik argues, apes became increasingly dependent on culture, and in a recurrent positive feedback loop, selection favored even larger brains, which improved culture, and so on. Van Schaik's answer to the puzzle raised at the beginning, then, is that great apes started out smart because they were safe from predators and ended up even smarter because their large brains and slow life histories allowed culture to develop and flourish. Van Schaik's argument has a few weaknesses--for example, the paucity of evidence for material culture in gorillas and bonobos. But, as he points out, these species have been studied intensively in only a few places, and signs of culture may yet emerge. Knowledge of great ape culture will continue to expand, however, only if these animals survive in the wild. At the end of the book, van Schaik describes how the chaos in Indonesia in the late 1990s led to widespread destruction of orangutan habitat (as well as the end of his field study). Despite serious threats, van Schaik thinks the red apes may yet escape extinction, but he is much less sanguine about the survival of their cultures. Sadly, ape cultures may disappear just as they begin to provide vital new insights into human cultural evolution.

Barbara Smuts is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She is author of Sex and Friendship in Baboons (reprinted with a new preface, Harvard University Press, 1999). (1,029)

Review

[A] beautifully written, compelling narrative that reads like a detective story. -- Barbara Smuts, Scientific American, December 2004

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (November 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674015770
• ISBN-13: 978-0674015777
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #670,987 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Barrel of Pongos, May 23, 2008

By	Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Homo sylvestris (man of the forest) is now placed cladistically at a farther remove from Homo sapiens than chimpanzees or gorillas, having been genetically isolated for 6 to 7 million years, and geographically isolated in two populations for perhaps 150,000 years. Author Carel van Schaik considers these two populations - on Sumatra and on Borneo - as distinct species, and concentrates on the fascinating life-styles of the Sumatran Pongo abelii. The text is based on patient and sometimes perilous field observation of the orangutans in the environment of swampy forest to which they are supremely adapted. Fossils are mentioned, but this is not a book of archaelogy. Thus it's enlivened by stunning photos of living pongids at home, climbing, eating, playing and seemingly having fun, and... using tools! building structures! activities only barely credited to chimps and previously assumed to be human-only behavior.

Is this a book about human evolution, as the subtitle suggests? Not really. Author van Schaik modestly and non-dogmatically suggests that the orangutans have a culture of learned behaviors which facilitates their survival, and that at some early moment of human evolution, "our" behaviors must have been similarly rudimentary yet remarkable. Is that suggestion even debatable? To me, it seems obviously so, though many details remain to be uncovered. At what stage of hominid evolution did such cultural behaviors appear? Van Schaik posits "convergent" evolution of primate social behaviors and technologies, and argues that such cultural adaptations have not been constant, but rather have been learned, lost, reinvented, etc. according to environmental pressures. The Sumatran orangutans, by observation, employ more such social and cultural strategies for subsistence than their "kin" on Borneo.

A beautiful love affair, this book is! Indeed the 'red apes' are beautiful beings, whose idyllic existence is threatened by their insatiable cousins, us. Almost every book of field observation by any naturalist these days ends with the same sad sermon. Just as "we" are learning to appreciate and understand the cultures of our kindred species, and to learn about ourselves from them, we are threatening to bring them to extinction. Honestly, I find myself tempted to don a cape, snatch up my ray-gun, and volunteer as a super-hero game warden to protect the dwindling habitat of the the Sumatran pongos from the international market-place in kitschy hardwood furniture. In my dreams...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful story, March 25, 2006

By	D. J. Nardi "TurtleDom" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This book flows quite beautifully, from the general biology of orangutans and their habitat to theories about the development of their culture. Van Schiak does not try to anthropomorphize the apes, but instead takes a reasoned view of their lives and shows that they do in fact have certain varying traditions and methods of tool use. Through it all, van Schiak explains his methodology and reasoning quite clearly.

It really is truly amazing how similar we are to the apes. Even one difference van Schiak points out, the presence of infanticide in Orangutan groups, bears an uncanny resemblance to our own Shakespearean past (Hamlet, for one). Yet, at the end, van Schiak is sure to point out those traits which are uniquely human.

A great read for ape-lovers or culture behaviorists.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Out of isolation, April 11, 2006

By	Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

About 14 million years ago, an African ape with a penchant for solitude strolled eastwards. Her descendents became the "red apes" of Borneo and Sumatra - the orang utan. Unlike their African cousins, orang utans don't regularly form troops or "gangs". As isolated forest wanderers, they are immensely difficult to study, especially compared to mountain gorillas or chimpanzees. Their isolation has led to more myths than facts about them - until Carel Van Schaik began reporting his findings. This book summarises his work in a stunning presentation of narrative and images. More importantly, it overturns many false ideas of how orang utans fit in the primate lineage. Our lineage.

Spending seven years in a swampy jungle brought van Schaik into intimate contact with orang utans. He discovered novel behaviour and unexpected talents. Among the most surprising revelations was the use of tools. Orang utans are at least as adept as gorillas with tools. There is clear planning in the selection and application of tools. Twigs as tools are made "oversize" before actual use, trimmed to the proper dimension before applying them. There are several fruits requiring special tools for seed retrieval, and photographs show a variety of shapes and lengths. Unlike chimps, however, orang utan tools are manipulated ["lipulated?"] with the mouth more than the hands. Van Schaik and his photographer, Perry van Duijnhoven, depict the tools and their owners with superb images.

With fewer predators to cope with [outside of humans, of course], the Red Ape has followed a different path from its African cousin. Gorillas, too, live on fruits and leaves, but remain ground dwellers. Chimpanzees run in organised troops, while the orang utan's social structure is more flexible. Orang utan young remain with the parents for years, providing many opportunities for parental training. The culture of orang utans must be learned anew with each generation, van Schaik stresses. The intelligence is there to absorb the education, and the habits aren't ingrained. Nest making is symptomatic, with the young building their construction skills over time. Early nests are ramshackle, and during inclement weather, a young ape may shift from his own nest to her mother's for better shelter. Nor is all this behaviour universal. Van Schaik notes the variations among populations he observed.

"Culture", of course, is a term humans wish to retain for their sole use. Van Schaik devotes a chapter to demolishing that restrictive view. He also expands the role of "symbolism", another shibboleth of cultural anthropology. We've restricted the application of "symbolism" to exclude other primates. The structure of orang utan society, he says, demonstrates how symbols are used for identification and communication. This isn't limited to physical artefacts, but may be found in vocalisations and other manifestations of individuality. He explains how training the young imparts cultural and social norms, something humans have limited to their own realm. The five great ape species exhibit vast differences in many aspects, but, van Schaik argues, that only demonstrates that ape intelligence has been utilised appropriately for each species. The intelligence was already there. It was adapted to provide the necessary behaviour for its environment. Ours was adapted most extensively. One aspect of that adaptation is that our species is threatening the existence of the other four. In particular, the Red Apes of Indonesia are being subjected to severe threat. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]