- These films were made in Kenya by Irven DeVore as part of his Ph.D. field research.
- DeVore was a student of S.L.Washburn, who promoted the inclusion of primate field studies
as a discipline within Anthropology departments (he called it "Biological Anthropology").
Beginning in the 1960s, most of a great new generation of primate field researchers were either Washburn's students
or students or those students.
Many of them were women, including Phyllis Jay (later Phyllis Jay Dolhinow), Linda Fedigan,
Sarah Hrdy, and about half of the contributors to Cambell's book, among others.
- Irven DeVore taught for many years at Harvard. My very first teaching assignment as a graduate student
was in a course co-taught by DeVore and an older anthropologist, William Howells.
DeVore showed these films in class. He also showed off his pet galago in class once.
- Prior to these films, research on wild primates was mostly based on studies of captive animals in zoos.
Clarence Ray Carpenter had studied howler monkeys in the 1940s (and filmed them), but little else
was known until the studies of Washburn's students and the nearly simultaneous work of Jane Goodall,
whose work we will discuss later. DeVore, in his commentary, always emphasized how different (and usually peaceful) the baboons
were in the field, in contrast to those who were continually fighting in captivitiy.
- DeVore's studies were carried out in a large nature preserve, the Nairobi National Park, where hunting and similar human
interference with wild animals is prohibited. (Before Kenya's independence, it was called Royal Nairobi Park,
a name used at least once in the film.) Although the animals here are totally wild, the park is quite accessible from
Nairobi, Kenya's capital. In several of the wide-angle shots in the first film, the rooftips of Nairobi
can be seen in the distance, and one of the park's boundaries is the main road from Nairobi, the inland capital,
to Mombasa, Kenya's main port city.
- As you watch these two films, pay attention to what DeVore says about dominance status and the ways in which it is
established without much fighting. Also, pay attention to the many important roles played by the "central hierarchy,"
a group of males who form the leadership of the group and play many other social roles.
- One wide-angle sequence shows mating behavior in these baboons (in the distance, to the left of the screen), after which the female runs away.
This behavior in baboons is very similar to similar behavior in rhesus macaques and other cercopithecine monkeys.
- We will discuss additional findings in class, after everyone has had a chance to view these films.
In particular, we will discuss the role of the younger male (the "scout") who typically walks in the most forward
position when the group is on the move. We will also discuss how the central hierarchy changes over time.
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