Primate Societies / Edition 1

by Barbara B. Smuts, Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth, Richard W. Wrangham

Overview

Primate Societies is a synthesis of the most current
information on primate socioecology and its theoretical and
empirical significance, spanning the disciplines of behavioral
biology, ecology, anthropology, and psychology. It is a very rich
source of ideas about other taxa.

"A superb synthesis of knowledge about the social lives of
non-human primates."—Alan Dixson, Nature

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226767161
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/15/1987
Edition description:	1
Pages:	585
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Robert M. Seyfarth is professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is coauthor with Dorothy L. Cheney authors of How Monkeys See the World, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Read an Excerpt

Primate Societies

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By Barbara B. Smuts, Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth, Richard W. Wrangham, Thomas T. Struhsaker

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 1987 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-76716-1

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CHAPTER 1

The Study of Primate Societies

Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth, Barbara B. Smuts, and Richard W. Wrangham

ORGANIZATION OF PRIMATE SOCIETIES AND ITS INTENDED AUDIENCE

The many similarities between ourselves and nonhuman primates have made monkeys and apes the focus of research in a variety of scientific disciplines. Anthropologists, for example, study primates to seek clues to the social behavior of early humans. The biomedical community depends on primates because of their physical similarity to humans, while primates offer psychologists a unique opportunity to study intelligence in creatures whose brain, more than that of any other species, is like our own. Finally, for biologists primates mirror the diversity of mammals themselves, extending from solitary, nocturnal species whose social organization is relatively simple to those that live in large, diurnal groups whose kinship, long-term relationships, and forms of reciprocity pose special challenges for theories about the evolution of social behavior.

With this diverse audience in mind, Primate Societies reviews what is known about the social behavior of primates in their natural habitats. The focus of the book is on social organization and behavior, although some ecological data are presented to provide a necessary background.

Primate Societies is organized into five parts. The chapters in part 1, "Evolution of Diversity," are ordered taxonomically and according to social organization. They describe the behavior and ecology of the approximately 200 species that make up the order Primates. Each chapter also addresses a specific behavioral or ecological topic of special relevance to that particular group. Our aim in this section has been to provide a complete, authoritative description of species differences and intra-specific variation among nonhuman primates. Authors focus on well-documented results rather than on theoretical issues, illustrate the magnitude of variation within each taxonomic group, and illuminate correlations among ecology, social organization, and behavior. Taken together, the chapters in part 1 should specify what data are available for testing theories as well as point to the gaps in current knowledge. These gaps are particularly apparent for New World monkeys and prosimians, which have received comparatively less scientific attention than the Old World monkeys and apes.

To achieve a concise presentation of information, authors have summarized their data in tables wherever possible. This sort of quantitative approach entails risks, however, because results presented in numerical or tabular form often assume an aura of precision and infallibility that may not be justified. Readers should be sensitive to the fact that, due to the varying lengths of time that different species have been studied, the quality of the data varies tremendously, and results are not always as definitive as they might seem.

As each species is mentioned in part 1, both Latin and common English names are given. Thereafter, English names are used except in those cases where to do so might be ambiguous. For a complete taxonomy of the Primates, as well as a complete listing of Latin names and the English equivalents we have adopted, readers are referred to the appendix. Technical terms are listed in the index, where a separate entry gives the pages on which each term has been defined.

The chapters in parts 2 through 5 abandon the taxonomic approach in order to address particular issues that apply to many different species. In part 2, "Socioecology," eight chapters on habitats and foraging behavior, community ecology, predation, life histories, dispersal, intergroup relations, and the relation between ecology and social organization examine primates as part of larger ecological communities and describe social behavior at the local population level. Part 3, "Group Life," follows with eleven chapters on social behavior that review the current understanding of social interactions within primate groups. These are followed by four chapters in part 4, "Communication and Intelligence," that discuss communication, intelligence, learning, and cultural transmission. Part 5, "The Future," includes one chapter on conservation that documents the very real danger of extinction threatening most of the world's nonhuman primates. Part 5 concludes with a chapter highlighting important new areas of research.

Who Should Read This Book?

Students. Primate Societies is primarily intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals in related fields interested in the behavior and ecology of nonhuman primates. We have assumed that readers will be familiar with the basic concepts of evolutionary theory and behavioral ecology that are learned in an introductory course in animal behavior.

At the same time, Primate Societies is also intended as a useful, thorough reference for professional anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, and those from the biomedical community. Although scientists in these fields approach primatology from quite different perspectives, all share a need for up-to-date information on the behavior of different species under natural conditions and on the theories that have been used to organize and explain these data.

Anthropologists. Many of the early students of primate behavior were anthropologists who sought analogies for the social organization of early humans in the behavior of nonhuman primates. Traditionally, anthropologists have tended to select a single primate species (such as the chimpanzee because of its genetic similarity to humans, or the baboon because it inhabits the East African savanna where early humans are thought to have evolved) and imagine this species' behavior as representative of the ancestral human condition. As the chapters in part 1 reveal, however, there is extraordinary diversity in primate social organization, even within a given habitat. Any attempt to extrapolate from living primates to early humans should obviously take account of this diversity and, rather than searching for single species as models, should attempt instead to uncover some of the basic principles that link ecology and social structure. Some of these principles are described, to the best of our current knowledge, in parts 2 through 4.

Psychologists and the Biomedical Community. In the United States alone, thousands of nonhuman primates serve as subjects in laboratory experiments each year. Primates are often the preferred subjects for psychologists investigating learning, memory, and other complex cognitive processes and for biomedical scientists whose work may ultimately be applicable to human health and disease. In each of these fields investigators must conduct experiments within strictly controlled conditions and limited budgets. Much of this research involves monkeys and apes that have been removed from their natural habitats and housed in individual cages, which, while efficient, allow no opportunity for normal social interaction. Scientists themselves often know little about their subjects' history or their subjects' behavior under natural conditions.

In the past, these conditions were viewed simply as the price one had to pay for conducting carefully controlled experiments at reasonable cost. It has become increasingly clear, however, that ignorance of an animal's natural social behavior, in addition to leading to potentially inhumane treatment, may produce bad science. Consider, for example, the search by neuropsychologists for similarities in the way human and nonhuman primates perceive communicative sounds. When humans are asked to discriminate between different speech sounds, most individuals perform better with their right ear than with their left. This is explained by the existence in the left cerebral hemisphere of an area specialized for speech perception (e.g., Masterson and Imig 1984). Despite the many similarities between human and nonhuman primate brains, however, for years similar cerebral lateralization could not be demonstrated for nonhuman primates (e.g., Hamilton 1977). Finally it was recognized that while humans had been tested with biologically important speech sounds, monkeys and apes had been tested with biologically irrelevant stimuli such as tones and hisses. The investigators' ignorance of their subjects' natural behavior and vocal communication had led them to use inappropriate stimuli in their tests. In 1978, when experiments first examined how primates perceive their own species' calls, a right-ear advantage clearly emerged (Petersen et al. 1978). Further insights into the similarities between human and nonhuman primate brains quickly followed (Hefner and Hefner 1984).

This example is not an isolated case, but forms part of a growing body of evidence that laboratory investigators who remain ignorant of their subjects' natural behavior risk making important scientific errors (e.g., Seligman and Hager 1972; Hinde and Stevenson-Hinde 1973). For all those working with captive primates, then, we offer Primate Societies as a reference to the diverse and complex ways in which evolution has shaped their behavior.

Biologists. Finally, field biologists, including those of us who have edited this volume, study primates for still other reasons, to elucidate the principles that govern the evolution of social organization and behavior. In the past twenty years, with the publication of papers by Hamilton, Trivers, Maynard Smith, and others, there has been a theoretical revolution in evolutionary biology, leading to the reexamination of earlier work, the establishment of new journals, and a dramatic increase in studies designed to clarify how factors such as kinship, reciprocity, sexual selection, and life history affect the evolution of behavior. Somewhat surprisingly, however, primate research has rarely been in the forefront of this work (Richard 1981), and most general textbooks in animal behavior rely primarily on studies of insects, fish, birds, or nonprimate mammals (e.g., Krebs and Davies 1981; Alcock 1984). This raises two questions. First, why have primate studies remained apart from other work in animal behavior? And second, can the behavior of primates be explained in terms of the same general principles that explain the behavior of other animals?

One reason primates are rarely used to test evolutionary theories derives from problems associated with studying them in their natural habitats. Many primate species live in areas where they are difficult to observe or identify individually and where political and logistical problems can often entirely prevent research. More important, even when individuals can be followed and recognized, primates are so long-lived that it may take at least a decade before data on kinship and reproductive success begin to accumulate. Little wonder that scientists interested in reproductive life histories have turned to animals that are short-lived, accessible, and easy to observe. It has also proved far more difficult to conduct manipulative experiments on nonhuman primates than on birds or nonprimate mammals, and as a result, experimental tests of evolutionary theories on nonhuman primates have lagged far behind those on other animals.

It is, of course, too early to know whether the behavior of nonhuman primates, like that of humans, will pose special problems for theories designed to explain the behavior of other animals. No doubt much of primate behavior and ecology will be consistent with generalizations drawn from other species. Even at this early stage, however, at least three features of primate behavior suggest unusual levels of complexity when compared with other animals. We mention these here because they offer additional reasons why primates have often been ignored by behavioral ecologists seeking simple explanations for a given pattern of behavior, and why biologists unfamiliar with primate research may profit from the material contained in Primate Societies.

What Makes Primates Different from Other Animals?

1. Primates have unusually varied and diverse ways of expressing themselves socially. Although it is always dangerous to pretend to know the limits of animal communicative repertoires (see chap. 36), we can say that the touching, hugging, mouthing, mounting, lip smacking, vocalizing, greeting, and grooming of primates allow them many subtly different ways of expressing affinity and perhaps more means of developing complex social relationships than are found in most other species. Moreover, primates seem to move easily from one behavioral "currency" to another, often apparently "trading," for example, a mount for tolerance at a food source, or a bout of grooming for later support in an alliance. Such diverse interactions have two consequences. On the one hand, they increase the likelihood that primates, more than any other animals, will have evolved complex, reciprocal interactions (e.g., Trivers 1971). On the other hand, however, they increase the difficulty of documenting the existence of complex features like reciprocity (see chaps. 25, 26).

2. The social organization of many primate species is unusually complex. A typical primate group contains individuals of different ages, sexes, dominance ranks, and kinship. Although this in itself is not unusual, primates also form temporary alliances, subgroups, and even long-term associations that cut across such categories. The result is (1) a complex network of interactions, with many alternative strategies for survival and reproduction, and (2) social groups in which individuals are likely to pursue a number of different strategies during their lifetimes. To cite just one example, baboon males can gain access to estrous females either by attaining alpha rank and intimidating rivals, by forming alliances with other males, or by establishing a long-term bond with particular adult females (see chaps. 31, 32). These different modes of achieving mating opportunities seem at first glance to be ideally suited for testing models of behavior that focus on alternative competitive strategies (e.g., Maynard Smith and Price 1973; Maynard Smith 1982; Parker 1984). However, most such models depend on a number of simplifying assumptions. For example, most assume that interactions are dyadic, that there are a very limited number of alternative behavioral strategies, and that knowledge of opponents is based directly on recent experience. These assumptions seldom apply to primates, whose social interactions often involve more than two individuals, numerous possible responses, and, at least in some cases, observational learning (chaps. 34, 37). As a result, theoretical models that have been valuable in explaining competitive interactions in other organisms are of only limited usefulness for primates. The wealth of detailed data on primate social interactions could, however, prove extremely useful in developing new models that are more relevant to species exhibiting complex social behavior (see Dunbar 1984b for an example).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Primate Societies by Barbara B. Smuts, Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth, Richard W. Wrangham, Thomas T. Struhsaker. Copyright © 1987 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword. David A. Hamburg,
Preface,
1. The Study of Primate Societies Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth, Barbara B. Smuts, and Richard W. Wrangham,
PART I: EVOLUTION OF DIVERSITY,
2. Lorises, Bushbabies, and Tarsiers: Diverse Societies in Solitary Foragers Simon K. Bearder,
3. Malagasy Prosimians: Female Dominance Alison F. Richard,
4. Tamarins and Marmosets: Communal Care of Offspring Anne Wilson Goldizen,
5. Monogamous Cebids and Their Relatives: Intergroup Calls and Spacing John G. Robinson, Patricia C. Wright, and Warren G. Kinzey,
6. Howlers: Variations in Group Size and Demography Carolyn M. Crockett and John F. Eisenberg,
7. Capuchins, Squirrel Monkeys, and Atelines: Socioecological Convergence with Old World Primates. John G. Robinson and Charles H. Janson,
8. Colobines: Infanticide by Adult Males. Thomas T. Struhsaker and Lysa Leland,
9. Forest Guenons and Patas Monkeys: Male-Male Competition in One-Male Groups Marina Cords,
10. Desert, Forest, and Montane Baboons: Multilevel Societies Eduard Stammbach,
11. Cercopithecines in Multimale Groups: Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Don J. Melnick and Mary C. Pearl,
12. Gibbons: Territoriality and Monogamy Donna Robbins Leighton,
13. Orangutans: Sexual Dimorphism in a Solitary Species Peter S. Rodman and John C. Mitani,
14. Gorillas: Variation in Female Relationships Kelly J. Stewart and Alexander H. Harcourt,
15. Chimpanzees and Bonobos: Cooperative Relationships among Males Toshisada Nishida and Mariko Hiraiwa-Hasegawa,
PART II: SOCIOECOLOGY,
16. Life Histories in Comparative Perspective Paul H. Harvey, R. D. Martin, and T. H. Clutton-Brock,
17. Food Distribution and Foraging Behavior John F. Oates,
18. Interactions among Primate Species Peter M. Waser,
19. Predation Dorothy L. Cheney and Richard W. Wrangham,
20. Demography and Reproduction R. I. M. Dunbar,
21. Dispersal and Philopatry Anne E. Pusey and Craig Packer,
22. Interactions and Relationships between Groups Dorothy L. Cheney,
23. Evolution of Social Structure Richard W. Wrangham,
PART III: GROUP LIFE,
24. Kinship Sarah Gouzoules and Harold Gouzoules,
25. Conflict and Cooperation Jeffrey R. Walters and Robert M. Seyfarth,
26. Social Behavior in Evolutionary Perspective Joan B. Silk,
27. Infants, Mothers, and Other Females Nancy A. Nicolson,
28. Infants and Adult Males Patricia L. Whitten,
29. Transition to Adulthood Jeffrey R. Walters,
30. Patterning of Sexual Activity Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Patricia L. Whitten,
31. Sexual Competition and Mate Choice Barbara B. Smuts,
32. Gender, Aggression, and Influence Barbara B. Smuts,
33. Can Nonhuman Primates Help Us Understand Human Behavior? Robert A. Hinde,
34. Dynamics of Social Relationships Frans B. M. de Waal,
PART IV: COMMUNICATION AND INTELLIGENCE,
35. Communication by Sight and Smell Anne C. Zeller,
36. Vocal Communication and Its Relation to Language Robert M. Seyfarth,
37. Intelligence and Social Cognition Susan Essock-Vitale and Robert M. Seyfarth,
38. Local Traditions and Cultural Transmission Toshisada Nishida,
PART V: THE FUTURE,
39. Conservation of Primates and Their Habitats Russell A. Mittermeier and Dorothy L. Cheney,
40. Future of Primate Research Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth, Barbara B. Smuts, and Richard W. Wrangham,
Appendix: The Order Primates: Species Names and a Guide to Social Organization,
List of Contributors,
Bibliography,
Notes,
Index,