1 - The monkeys of the Taï forest: an introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Summary
Introduction
With several notable exceptions (e.g. Schaller 1963, Goodall 1965, 1968), early field primatology in Africa was practically equivalent to observing baboons on the savannah. Because of the prominence of open-country primates in models of human evolution as well as the difficulties of seeing and habituating cercopithecids in dense forest, many of the first studies of African primates focussed on terrestrial monkeys such as Olive baboons (Washburn & Devore 1961a, 1961b), Chacma baboons (Hall 1962), Hamadryas baboons (Kummer 1968), Yellow baboons (Altmann & Altmann 1970), Gelada baboons (Crook 1966, Crook & Aldrich-Blake 1968, Dunbar & Dunbar 1974), patas monkeys (Hall 1965) and vervet monkeys (Struhsaker 1967) (but see Haddow 1952, Rowell 1966, Aldrich-Blake 1968, 1970, Chalmers 1968a, 1968b, Gautier & Gautier-Hion 1969, Struhsaker 1969, Gartlan & Struhsaker 1972). Interest in arboreal primates eventually prompted more biologists to venture beneath the closed canopy and with Struhsaker's (1975) classic monograph on red colobus monkeys as a reference point, our knowledge of forest-dwelling African monkeys has grown significantly over the last 30 years. The result has been a burgeoning literature on African cercopithecoids including detailed treatments of guenons (e.g. Gautier-Hion et al. 1988, Glenn & Cords 2002), colobines (Davies & Oates 1994) and monkeys throughout the Congo Basin (Gautier-Hion et al. 1999).
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- Monkeys of the Taï ForestAn African Primate Community, pp. 1 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
References
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