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Among Orangutans: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture

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Manufacturer: Belknap Press
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The local people know him as the ""Man of the Forest,"" who refused to speak for fear of being put to work. And indeed the bear-like Sumatran orangutan, with his moon face, lanky arms, and shaggy red hair, does seem uncannily human; one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, the orangutan may have much to tell us about the origins of human intelligence, technology, and culture. In this book one of the world's leading experts on Sumatran orangutans, working in collaboration with nature photographer Perry van Duijnhoven, takes us deep into the disappearing world of these captivating primates.

In a narrative that is part adventure, part field journal, part call to conscience, Carel van Schaik introduces us to the colorful characters and complex lives of the orangutans who inhabit the vanishing forests of Sumatra. In compelling words and pictures, we come to know the personalities and temperaments of our primate cousins as they go about their days: building double-decker tree nests; using leaves as napkins, gloves, rain hats, and blankets, and sticks as backscratchers and probes; nurturing their infants longer and more intensely than any other nonhuman mammal. Here are the births and deaths, the first use of a tool, the defeat of a rival, the gradual loss of influence that, while fascinating to observe, may also help us to reconstruct human evolution.

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DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 599.883
EAN: 9780674015777
ISBN: 0674015770
Label: Belknap Press
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2004-11-30
Publisher: Belknap Press
Studio: Belknap Press


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo
• Orangutans: Wizards of the Rain Forest
• World Atlas of Great Apes and their Conservation
• Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape
• Gorilla Society: Conflict, Compromise, and Cooperation Between the Sexes


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: A Barrel of Pongos
Comment: 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...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Orangutans are gregarious when they can be
Comment: The orangutan has been seen as a loner, wandering a forest that offers just enough food to pay the cost of collecting it. But this may be because homo sapiens have liked to farm where orangutans could afford to congregate. Schaik found a swamp where orangutans still congregated.

Just by itself, this book will tell you things about orangutans - the 'other' surviving not-humans - that no one knew until very recently. If you read this before or after reading "The Red Ape: Orangutans and Human Origins" by Jeffrey H. Schwartz (which points out that morphologically, humans and are orangs are very close, and the genetic evidence is not really as solid and cross-referenced as you might have thought) you might find yourself immune to all arguments by analogy with chimp behavior for quite some time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Out of isolation
Comment: 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]
Customer Rating:
Summary: A wonderful story
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bravo to a great researcher
Comment: I have always been interested in the rather rarified air of evolution theory, not because I don't believe it, but it ironically demands a leap of faith because there are so many gaps in getting humans from having ancestors who crawled out of the ooze many millions of years ago to putting a man on the moon. van Schaik has invested an amazing amount of time in looking at our ape cousins, in conditions that would make most people just give up and go home to watch chimps and other apes in the comfort of their offices instead of slogging through armpit deep swamps for hours day after day to observe our cousins in their natural habitats.
van Schaik is owed a great amount of gratitude for his extraordinary contributions to making observations in unbelievable conditions and drawing some real observations about orangutan behavior and its possible parallels with human development.
Unlike some primatologists such as DeWaal, he actually has observations and conclusions that connect some dots in a logical way instead of silly extrapolations into political conclusions that are so superficial as to be laughable.
My hat goes off to a great contributor to real research and advancing our knowledge of our fellow apes.
This is really a great book.

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Borneo-Dayak Crafts - Dayak tribe's arts and tribal crafts
Collection of Indonesia's Borneo Dayak tribal crafts for wholesale export business; from traditional Dayak tribe's baby carrier & combat shields to decorated fruit serving dishes & fruit bowls. Since hundred years ago, the Dayak tribe has its own traditional arts and crafts as part of their dayak traditional culture. Today, Borneo-Dayak Crafts makes them available to the modern world.