(with a New Introduction and Epilogue) Shirley C. Strum The University of Chicago Press 2001 FROM THE BACK COVER: Vividly written and filled with fascinating insights, Almost Human chronicles thirty years of Shirley Strum's fieldwork with a troop of olive baboons nicknamed the Pumphouse Gang. From the first paragraph, the reader is drawn along with Strum into the world of the baboons, learning about the tragedies and triumphs of their daily lives-and of her own voyage of courageous scientific discovery. In the same way that Jane Goodall's pioneering study of chimpanzees revealed their likeness to humans, Strum's work shows how, contrary to the popular image and the scientific evidence of the time, the more distantly related baboons are just as socially savvy. Almost Human includes her groundbreaking discovery that social finesse, rather than male dominance and aggression, plays a crucial role in baboon society, and Strum relates the drama of a daring translocation experiment with the Pumphouse Gang that ultimately ensured their survival when their habitat was threatened by destruction. This edition includes a new introduction that places Strums research in the context of the current global conservation crisis and an epilogue that tells us what has happened to the Pumphouse Gang since the book was first published. Shirley C. Strum is professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She is coeditor of The New Physical Anthropology, Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-Based Conservation, and Primate Encounters: Models of Science, Gender, and Society, the last published by the University of Chicago Press. Strum has studied olive baboons in Kenya since 1972 and is director of the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project. CONTENTS Author's Note vi Foreword viii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xvii 1. Starting Out 5 2. Two Newcomers 23 3. Peggy 38 4. Changes 54 5. Issues 69 6. Starting on the Males 83 7. The Saga of Sherlock 94 8. Bo and David 105 9. Some Solutions 117 10. Smart Baboons 128 11. Implications 144 12. Woes 157 13. Crop Raiding 168 14. Humans 189 15. Searching 205 16 Desperation-and a Happy Ending 218 17. Capture and Release 229 18. Final Moves 242 19. Freedom 251 Appendices 261 Appendix I: 262 Communication Appendix II: 275 Table 1-Peggy: A Baboon Family Table 2-Peggy. Fifteen Minutes Table 3-A Field Worker's Daily Notes Bibliography 279 Index 283 Epilogue 295 WHERE TO ORDER: University of Chicago Press 1427 East 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637-2954 Telephone: (773) 568-1550 Fax: (773) 702-9756 Web site: www.press.uchicago.edu Price: $18.00(paperback) ISBN: 0-226-77756-1
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