Synopses & Reviews
As our closest living relatives, monkeys and apes hold a special appeal for humans. Their lively inquiring minds, superb agility, and manipulative skills, that so remind us of ourselves, have evolved over tens of millions of years and have their origins deep in the fossil record.
This natural history, clearly written by two distinguished primatologists, provides a basic and fully-illustrated introduction to the order of primates. It answers such questions as how and why this remarkable process of adaptive change took place, what features of primate primitive anatomy lent themselves to such striking changes, what were the origins of their sophisticated social activities, and what are our relationships, as humans, to these animals and their ancestors.
The Natural History of the Primates introduces the order and describes its general characteristics and distribution, reviews the fossil record on primate origins, and describes anatomical details, and social behavior. The heart of the book offers specific profiles of the individual primate species—among them the lemurs of Madagascar, the bushbabies of Africa, and the marmosets of South America, the impudent capuchin monkeys, the highly social baboons, the striking black-and-white colobus, and, familiar to us all, the gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. A final chapter focuses on Homo sapiens and its precursors. The book concludes with a helpful glossary, a list of further readings, and references.
Review
"A superb introduction to the most fascinating group of animals on earth."
—Desmond Morris
Review
"A superb introduction to the most fascinating group of animals on earth."
—Desmond Morris
Review
"The British primatologists John and Prue Napier have, during two decades, prepared both popular books and stringently technical volumes within their irresistible and active discipline. Now they have compiled another handsomely illustrated brief survey. Half of the book is a compact, full profile of these our kin, primates figured and described genus by genus the world around. The rest presents a clear and current account of the classification, origin, structure and behavior of the most distinctive order of mammals. The last chapter reviews the current understanding of human evolution, the jigsaw puzzle of our own origin that we crave to assemble out of so fragmentary a set of fossil pieces."
—Philip Morrison, Scientific American
Synopsis
This natural history, clearly written by two distinguished primatologists, provides a basic and fully-illustrated introduction to the order of primates.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [190]-195) and index.
About the Author
John Napier is Visiting Professor of Primate Biology, Birkbeck College, London. Prior to this appointment he was the first Director of the Primate Biology Program at the Smithsonian Institution. He is President of Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire, famed throughout the world for its primate collections.Prue Napier is widely recognized as a leading authority on primate taxonomy. This book is a unique survey and reference that bridges a gap between her Monkeys and Apes and the now classic Handbook of Living Primates which she wrote with John Napier. She is Vice President of Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire, famed throughout the world for its primate collections.