Best primatology books according to redditors

Apes and Human Evolution by Russell Tuttle was amazing. It's huge, and amazingly detailed.

It depends what you mean.

Bernard Chapais suggests that both monogamy and polygamy are natural for humans. He also seems to think that culture can mostly override natural reflexes, which would make our sexual history largely irrelevant. But even he treats the subject with the humility it deserves. I just think Mr. Ryan is being a little too confident, it doesn't take a primatologist to be skeptical.

You might enjoy The Politics of Species.

There are also the somewhat more "textbook" approaches such as Conservation Biology for All and the famous A Primer of Conservation Biology by Richard Primack

> Can you give sources on gender identity's derivation of sexual functions?

It is philosophy of mind called functionalism. There are plenty of papers where authors claim that every feeling is derivation of functions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind)

>Your explanation doesn't really explain why the development of agp makes evolutionary sense.

Poiani in this book https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Homosexuality-Perspective-Aldo-Poiani/dp/0521145147 explained the role on self domestication and neoteny in the evolution of primate sexuality.


>Why would the development of hsts trans people be the same as the evolution of homosexuality?

Because HSTS are essentially homosexuals.

>What separates the two groups?

Social context. In one social context homosexuals are third gender, in another they are trans women, in another - gays, in another - abomination.

Grooming is not altruism. It's a way for an individual to be favored by another one.

For the example of birds, it's really what I think I tried (at least, hehe) to explain: individuals will help kins because it is believed that sharing a common genotype is enough to ensure the cooperation. The survival of the genes will "talk": behaviors that favor the survival will be the ones passed down to other generations.

I'm not saying humans are any better, I say humans have more complex societies that go a lot more beyong the genetic factor: religions, laws, philosophy, per examples of cultural factors, enforce particular behaviors that are not, in essence, adaptative. Now, that's also why amongst humans war exists, for one thing, while, for what we know, only chimps have shown a similar (but very bowdlerized) behavior. I'm not specist at all and the more you learn about primates, the more you come to really be fascinated by the way they structure their societies.

If this is of your interest, Primeval kinship is a really good book on the subject, and it's quite the sum (for what I know) of the new ideas on this physical anthropology subject.

This?

https://www.amazon.com/Southern-Bigfoot-Files-Alabama-Archives/dp/0991585763

Always the same tired old bullshit repeated again and again.


https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Bonobo-Lynn-Saxon/dp/1523945516

Biologists and naturalists have studied homosexuality in non-human animals.


[Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity] (http://www.amazon.ca/Biological-Exuberance-Homosexuality-Natural-Diversity/dp/031225377X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394784214&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Biological+Exuberence%3A+Animal+Homosexuality+and+Natural+Diversity)


Animal Homosexuality: A Biosocial Perspective

>… so vegans aren't going to stand in the way of that

Actually some would. Of course animals lacking moral agency (do they really?) makes some difference to the situation. Also organizing killing and exploitation on an industrial scale is fundamentally different to inter-animal predator-prey relationships. But if humans without moral agency were to present a harm to others we would typically intervene too, wouldn’t we? Thus imposing different judgements in both situations is prima facie speciesist, if it cannot be justified. And your justifications basically appeals to nature as unchangeable. which is unconvincing to me. Also is preying really always a matter of individual survival? Is it so inconceivable that not at least some of these relationships could be pacified by means of engineering? At least I’d like to see some research being done here, before giving up on wild animals’ fate as an unchangeable tragedy.