Relationships Between Adult Males and Females. Social Behavior and Social Relationships. Environmental Pressures and Physical Abnormalities. Factors Determining Distribution and Density. Why Study Chimpanzees? Parallels with Ourselves. He concludes with a summary chapter, "Why Are Pygmy Chimpanzees Interesting?" The book includes 8 maps and 78 striking photographs that depict the wide behavioral repertoire of the pygmy chimpanzee. After the first chapter, "Why Study Chimpanzees?," the author presents chapters on distribution, social groups and social patterns, food, the behavior of individuals, sexual behavior, and social behavior and social relationships. Their sexual behavior also promotes food sharing, reduces tensions between males and females, and indeed matches our own in complexity and bonding importance. But by pursuing sexual and quasi-sexual behavior during interactions - between individuals of any age or sex and with remarkable frequency - pygmy chimpanzees conceal the operation of rank and live peacefully together in large groups. In most primates, "competition" determines how individuals and groups subsist and leave descendants, and dominate or subordinate rank determines relationships between individuals. On the basis of individual survival, they are the most successful of the higher primates.
As such, they are broadening our understanding of human and prehominid evolution. Pygmy chimpanzees are thought by some to be the closest living relatives to ancestral Homo Sapiens. Throughout, the author compares the two species, giving the reader an appreciation of their contrasting habits. There are also great differences in its behavior and its social and ecological relationships. It is smaller, darker, and slimmer, stands more upright, and is far more active sexually throughout its life. The pygmy chimpanzee differs taxonomically and physiologically from the familiar "common" chimpanzee seen in zoos and circuses. The Wamba Forest is the site of the longest continuous field study of the pygmy chimpanzee, and this book is a richly illustrated, first-hand account of the author's observations and experiences in Wamba from 1974 to 1985. Also, the rarest of the great apes, it is found only in the tropical forest region of central Zaire. Written by one of the world's principal specialists on the pygmy chimpanzee, this is the first comprehensive work on the last of the African great apes to be studied in the wild.
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