malabar
Homo Malabarus
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 673
Location: Bristol, UK
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 Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject: 216. A Primate's Memoir, Robert Sapolsky |
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This is one of my all-time favorite books. I have read it many times and look forward to doing so again. It's an old friend whose stories never get boring with repetition.
Robert Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford University Medical School (http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2001/novdec/features/sapolsky.html) who studies the effects of social status on stress hormone levels in baboons, among other things. He has also written Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and The Trouble with Testosterone (Junk Food Monkeys in the UK), which focused on his scientific work, but this book is more of a personal take on his time spent in Kenya with the baboons.
What I love so much about this book is the tone, and how it combines scientific rigor with social commentary and just the right amount of humor, usually directed at the author himself. Sapolsky casts himself as the innocent abroad, falling for all kinds of scams that, in retrospect, seem pretty obvious; all his expensive education can't keep him from getting taken, over and over again. But, being a smart guy, he learns from his mistakes, and occasionally manages to turn the tables.
Probably my favorite anecdote concerns a meeting of carnivore biologists sponsored by some unnamed governmental organisation. The biologists were suspicious of the increasingly unlikely explanations given as to the purpose of their summons, with speculation eventually degenerating into things like, "The government wanted to know how to manipulate scientists. The carnivore biologists were just for practice, and now they're pulling this on rocket scientists." The funniest explanation I leave you to find for yourselves. |
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