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It's a wonder Robert Sapolsky is still alive. After over 20 years in the Serengetti
studying baboons, he seems to have had more narrow escapes at the hands of his fellow Homo
Sapiens than from any thundering herds of wildebeests or elephants stampeding through his
campground; he falls prey over the years to dozens of scams at the hands of merchants,
drivers, even kidnappers. Never is his life more in danger than during an overland trip
with a pair of Arab truck drivers traveling through the territory of arch enemies from a
warring faction. Somehow, just when he thinks he has figured out every conceivable method
of parting with his meager and hard-earned money, he encounters yet another diabolical
scheme. Too wise too late.
As the son of immigrant Jews in Brooklyn, Sapolsky spent his youth hanging around the
primate diorama in the Museum of Natural History. He dreamed of studying mountain gorillas
and learned Swahili in high school so as to prepare to fulfill what he felt was his
destiny --- to study these magnificent animals. However, due to his father's deteriorating
condition from a neurological disorder, he veers from that course to studying the
relationship between stress and disease, and baboons seem the perfect subject. Following
graduation he embarks on a field study in Kenya. Filled with book learning but almost
unbelievably naive, Sapolsky's first hard lesson is that the fluent Swahili he so
carefully cultivated is not the Swahili spoken in Kenya, leaving him unable to communicate
to buy essentials and procure overland transportation. This is the first of many truths he
learns about Africa: nothing is predictable, none of the stereotypes hold true. Everything
he previously learned about Africa was either wrong, skewed, or dangerously
oversimplified. He is armed with years of book learning on primate neurosystems, but his
naivete leaves him defenseless in dealing with the human culture.
Sapolsky's nearest human neighbors are a warlike Masai tribe and the peaceable bushmen. He
hires some of them to assist him in his neurological research, and his encounters with his
African friends and employees are as fascinating as the adventures with his large family
of baboons. He learns that female baboons are the victims of a birth-defined caste system,
not unlike ruling class/lower class systems common in some human societies to this day. He
learns why some males become successful leaders and why others become brutish tyrants. He
learns that baboons have a sense of humor and flawless memories, and are capable of
tricking their Homo Sapien cousins in astonishing and often hilarious ways.
A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR is at once witty, poignant and enlightening. Sapolsky relates that he
fully expected to experience the loneliness and isolation felt by many Peace Corps
volunteers who often sink into depression somewhere around the 10th month of their first
year, just when friends get bored with sending letters and when the rainy season is at its
peak. He was dismayed, then, to think he was cracking up in his first month:
"The trouble was elephants. Did you know that female elephants have breasts? By this,
I do not mean rows of teats, a mama elephant lying on her side with dozens of little
piglet elephants nursing with their eyes still closed. I mean breasts, two huge voluptuous
billowy mounds, complete with cleavage. I bet you had no idea, did you? Nor did I --- it
is a subject rarely broached in our public schools. I'm out in the bush that first month,
armed with binoculars and stopwatch and notepad, spending the days carefully watching
baboons mating left and right. And then, suddenly, some pachyderms come cruising past, and
I see some elephants with these, well, breasts. And the natural first reaction is to
think, Oh great, I'm such a horny lascivious pathetic adolescent that after a mere month
of isolation in the bush I've already cracked, I'm hallucinating breasts the size of
Volkswagens on the elephants. Horrors, to have one's psychotic break occur so soon, and to
have it take the form of a puerile sexual obsession many embarrassing steps below gawking
at National Geographic studies. I was greatly relieved to eventually discover that the
elephants' breasts were real, that I was not having some Marlin Perkins wet dream."
For readers fascinated by the human condition, A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR is nearly
un-put-down-able. Robert M. Sapolsky is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford
University and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National
Museums of Kenya. He is the author of THE TROUBLE WITH TESTOSTERONE and WHY ZEBRAS DON'T
GET ULCERS, both Los Angeles Times Book Award finalists. He is a recipient of a
MacArthur Foundation genius grant and lives in San Francisco.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea (HOST BKPG ROZ)
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