Overview

An absorbing investigation of chimpanzee language and communication. This Tenth Anniversary Edition contains a new final chapter and a new preface. The Song of the Ape traces the individual histories of five chimpanzees. Interspersed with these histories, the book details the long history of scientists attempting (and failing) to train apes to use human grammar and language. Ultimately, the book shows that while laboratories try in vain to teach human grammar to a chimpanzee, there is a living lexicon being passed down through the generations of each chimpanzee group in the wild. What is natural is more fascinating and more miraculous than anything than can be artifically forced on a chimpanzee. The Song of the Ape is a lively, engaging, and personal account, with many moments of humor as well as the occasional heartbreak, and it will appeal to anyone who wants to listen in as our closest relatives converse.

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9781736649824

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Andrew R. Halloran, PhD is a primatologist who studies chimpanzee behavior and chimpanzee ecology. Dr. Halloran is the Director of Chimpanzee Behavior & Care at Save the Chimps in Fort Pierce, Florida -- a sanctuary that provides a home to chimpanzees previously used in biomedical research, entertainment, and the pet trade. He is the co-founder of the Tonkolili Chimpanzee Project in Sierra Leone, a conservation initiative that seeks to mitigate conflicts between humans and chimpanzees in anthropogenic landscapes. He is the author of Lion Shaped Mountain.

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