Chimpanzee: Lessons from our Sister Species

by Kevin D. Hunt

The chimpanzee is one of our planet's best-loved and most instantly recognisable animals. Splitting from the human lineage between four and six million years ago, it is (along with its cousin, the bonobo) our closest living relative, sharing around 94% of our DNA. First encountered by Westerners in the seventeenth century, virtually nothing was known about chimpanzees in their natural environment until 1960, when Jane Goodall travelled to Gombe to live and work with them. Accessibly written, yet fully referenced and uncompromising in its accuracy and comprehensiveness, this book encapsulates everything we currently know about from their discovery and why we study them, to their anatomy, physiology, genetics and culture. The text is beautifully illustrated and infused with examples and anecdotes drawn from the author's thirty years of primate observation, making this a perfect resource for students of biological anthropology and primatology as well as non-specialists interested in chimpanzees.

Genres: Textbooks

596 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 20, 2020

About the author

Kevin D. Hunt is Professor of Animal Behaviour and Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also Founder and Director of the Semliki Chimpanzee Project, which was established in 1996 to study and preserve the chimpanzees within the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve. Broadly trained in various anthropological disciplines, much of Professor Hunt's published work has centred on functional morphology and what chimpanzee locomotion, posture and ecology can tell us about what led humans to diverge from apes, and what advantage bipedalism gave our chimpanzee-like ancestors roughly five million years ago.

Reviews

[Paleoanthro · Rating 4 out of 5]

An encyclopedic, informative, and entertaining look at our closest relative, the chimpanzee. Packed with details and anecdotes, this is a scientific compendium of everything that is a chimpanzee, from behavior and ecology to biology and evolution and so much more. Without question, an essential reference for anyone who wants to understand our closest living relative.

[Ev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel extremely lucky to have had the privilege to hear Dr Hunt lecture and talk about his experiences in the field! He is very knowledgeable on bioanthropology and really knows his stuff