Customer Reviews

Chimpanzee Cultures: With a Foreword by Jane Goodall

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The book surveys our current scientific understanding of chimpanzee behavior. Both common chimpanzees and bonobos are covered. I doubt any reasonable person who read this book would challenge the notion that the term "culture" is applicable to chimpanzees. I particularly liked the sections on social relations and cognition. Anyone wanting to understand human behavior would do well to read this book.

More scientific in nature than most books on chimpanzees, the editors have compiled a series of papers written by noted primatologists on the subject of chimpanzee culture. The book is divided into sections: Ecology, Social Relations, and Cognition. With articles titled like "Biobehavorial Roots of Language: A Comparative Perspective of Chimpanzee, Child, and Culture," you know you aren't reading a book intended for the mass market. These papers often contain objective measures of the authors' studies represented in graphs and charts, with minimal photographic illustration. However, for anyone researching the details of chimpanzee culture, this book offers a wealth of insight from a variety of sources.

I recommend this book only for those seriously interested in chimpanzees and primate social structure. Others will find this book too dry and scientific, especially when compared to the more anecdotal books written by Jane Goodall.