Apes of the World: Their Social Behavior, Communication, Mentality and Ecology

443 Pages·1986·8.59 MB·English

by  Russell H. Tuttle

APES OF THE WORLD
NOYES SERIES
IN
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR, ECOLOGY,
CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT
BenjaminB. Beck, Ph.D., Consulting Editor
A series of professional and reference books
in ethology devoted to the better under
standingofanimal behavior, ecology,conser
vation,and management.
WOLVES OF THE WORLD: Perspectives of Behavior,
Ecology, and Conservation.
Edited byFredH. Harrington andPaulC. Paquet
IGUANAS OF THE WORLD: Their Behavior, Ecology,
and Conservation.
Edited by GordonM. BurghardtandA. Stanley Rand
HORSE BEHAVIOR: The Behavioral Traits and Adapta
tions ofDomestic and Wild Horses, Including Ponies.
By GeorgeH. Waring
GAZELLES AND THEIR RELATIVES: A Study in
Territorial Behavior.
ByFritz R. Walther, Elizabeth Cary Mungall, and GeraldA. Grau
THE MANApEMENT AND BIOLOGY OF AN EXTINCT
SPECIES: PERE DAVID'8 DEER.
Edited byBenjaminB. Beck and Christen Wemmer
APES OF THE WORLD: Their SocialBehavior, Communi
cation, Mentality and Ecology.
ByRussellH. Tuttle
APES
OF THE WORLD
Their Social Behavior,
Communication, Mentality,
and Ecology
Reprint Edition
by
Russell H. Tuttle
Department of Anthropology,
Committee on Evolutionary Biology,
The Morris Fishbein Center for the Study
ofthe History ofScience and Medicine,
and The College,
The University ofChicago,
and
Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center,
Emory University
NOYES PUBLICATIONS
WILLIAM ANDREW PUBLISHING, LLC
ParkRidge, NewYork, U.S.A.
Copyright©1986by Russell H.Tuttle
No partofthisbook maybereproduced inanyform
without permission inwritingfromthePublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCard Number: 86-17960
ISBN: 0-8155-1104-3
Printed intheUnitedStates
Published inthe United States ofAmerica by
Noyes PUblications/William Andrew Publishing, LLC
169KinderkamakRd,ParkRidge, NY 07656
10987654321
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-Publication Data
Tuttle, Russell.
Apesoftheworld.
Bibliography: p.
Includesindex.
1.Apes--Behavior. 2. Apes--Ecology. 3. Mammals-
Behavior. 4.Mammals--Ecology. I.Title.
OL737.P9T87 1986 599.88'0451 86-17960
ISBN 0-8155-1104-3
to
Mother
for much more than life
and
Khmdti Almas
for Marlene, Nicole and Matthew
v

Foreword
For several generations of primatologists, questions about virtu
ally any general aspect of the biology of apes were referred to two
books by Robert Mearns Yerkes. The first of these appeared in
1929 and was entitled The Great Apes: A Study ofAnthropoid Life.
It was co-authored with his wife Ada. The second book, Chimpan
zees: A Laboratory Colony followed in 1943. The breadth of these
two publications was remarkable though it now seems limited by
comparison with the present work by Professor Russell Tuttle of
the University of Chicago.
Yerkes himself listed a few of the research areas covered in the
1943 book which he felt to be significant"... because of the nature
of our discoveries and their relations to human life." This list by
Yerkes is worth considering, both for the common ground with Apes
of the World, and for the vast amount of new information now avail
able. It includes the following areas: (a) physical characteristics,
growth, and maturation; (b) the sexual and reproductive cycles, and
especially estrus, ovulation, gestation, and parturition; (c) aspects
of sexual and reproductive behavior; (d) auditory and visual sensory
and perceptual processes; (e) neural correlates of behavior; (f) be
havioral adaptations, as in discrimination learning and other modes
of habit formation; (g) factors, both internal and environmental,
which affect behavioral adaptations; (h) memory and imagination;
(i) capacity for the modification of environment as in the shaping
and use of tools; (j) symbolism, ideation, insight, or their counter
part; (k) linguistic expression and capacity; (1) suggestibility; (m)
emotional traits and their modes of expression; (n) social relations
and organization; (0) drug addiction and drug susceptibility; (p)
parasite control and related problems of health and hygiene.
vii
viii Foreword
With the exception of husbandry and drug addiction, these sub
jects all find a place in Tuttle's book, but with a data base so differ
ent that a reader might be forgiven for momentarily forgetting that
the same subjects are under discussion. In some ways the transforma
tion in the corpus of facts known to Yerkes that is made available
to us in Tuttle's book brings to mind the revolution brought about
in biology during the same period by n101ecular genetics.
The contents of The Great Apes was derived largelyfromresearch
on comparative anatomy and physiology, and from studies of the
behavior of animals in captivity, for comparative psychology was
then at its most vigorous and creative, and contemporaries with
whom Yerkes interacted regularly and productively included E.B.
Holt, Karl Lashley, Edward Thorndike, and John B. Watson. There
was an emphasis then on sensory abilities, perception, intelligence
testing, and sexual behavior, on all of which Yerkes was an authority.
He pioneered as chairman of the National Research Council Com
mittee for Research in Problems of Sex from 1921 to 1947,a story
in itself, for there was oppressive censorship of research and pub
lications on sexual behavior in those days: Frank Beach and Alfred
Kinsey were among those whose ground-breaking research was
made possible by Yerkes's support. But you would search in vain
for much of interest on the natural history of sexual behavior in
The Great Apes. Nothing was known of the extraordinary diversity
of their mating systems and patterns of social organization. Despite
the efforts of H. Bingham, C. Carpenter, H. Nissen and others, such
topics were still largely terra incognita.
As will be immediately evident to readers of Apes ofthe World,
the situation today is vastly different. With the possible exception
of the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee, we now have a very complete
picture of the ecology and behavior of all of the anthropoid apes,
creating a new frame of reference for almost all other aspects of
their behavior. Hundreds of thousands of observation hours in the
field over the past 20 years have yielded data so richly that non
human primates are now among the best known of all vertebrates
from the viewpoint of their social behavior and its variation, both
within and between species. Much contemporary theorizing in
evolutionary biology employs primate field data, whether the issues
are the nature and evolutionary significance of infanticide, or com
parative studies of the relationships between diet and patterns of
social organization.
By the mid-1980's, several long-term field projects had reached
the crucial point of development at which radically new syntheses
began to emerge. With the common chimpanzee, the names of
J. Goodall, A. Kortlandt, J. Itani and T. Nishida come to mind;
Foreword ix
with the mountain gorilla, D. Fossey and G. Schaller; with the
orangutan, B. Galdikas, J. MacKinnon, and P. Rodman; with gibbons,
D. Chivers and others.
The time is clearly ripe for a major reassessment ofwhere things
no\v stand with regard to the biology ofthe anthropoid apes, taking
special account ofthe revelations that have only begun to make sense
in recent years about their social behavior, tool use and cognitive
abilities. Radically new lines of evidence have emerged, both from
field research, and from the remarkable explorations into the abili
ties of captive apes to work with natural and language-based systems
of communication, initiated by B. and A. Gardner, and sustained
with such vigor and imagination by E. Menzel, D. Premack, D.
Runlbaugh, E.S. Savage-Rumbaugh, and H. Terrace.
As a physical anthropologist, Russell Tuttle is ideally suited to
the task. Avid and meticulous as a scholar, he has accomplished a
truly monumental achievement with this new synthesis on the social
behavior, communication, mentality and ecology of the apes. The
emphasis is radically different from The Great Apes, but had Yerkes
survived to see this synthesis of the new flowering of research in
primatology, I have no doubt that it would have received his full
blessing.
Some of the new developments he had already anticipated. In a
famous and uncannily prescient insight, he concluded " ... from
the various evidences that the great apes have plenty to talk about,
but no gift for the use of sounds to represent individual, as con
trasted with racial, feelings or ideas. Perhaps they can be taught to
use their fingers, somewhat as does the deaf and dumb person, and
thus helped to acquire a simple, nonvocal, sign language."
Tuttle acknowledges this and many other debts to Yerkes fully
and graciously, and yet this is a book that Yerkes himself could
never have written. It is no dry compendium of facts and quotations,
but a personal statement about the current state of our understand
ing of the biology and behavior ofthe apes. Without sacrificing com
prehensiveness or reliability it is leavened with wit and word play.
When issues are unresolved, and controversies rage, all viewpoints
are fairly represented. Where major lacunae still exist, they are firmly
indicated, and no punches are pulled.
Delicate questions of sexual comportment are handled with a
forthrightness that would have warmed the hearts of Yerkes's com
mittee for research on sex. The bizarre homosexual "hunching"
behavior of female pygmy chimpanzees, for example, first observed
in captivity, and now well documented in the wild, earns appropriate
comment. Noting the suggestions by Rumbaugh and Savage-Rum
baugh that distinctive hand positions, some apparently iconic, may