IF YOU like to think of chimps as wise, rational tool-users, gorillas as gentle giants, or bonobos as sexed-up hippie apes, be prepared for a shock. Among African Apes, a collection of field diaries, is primatology given the Tarantino treatment.
In the introduction, Martha Robbins of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, emphasises that extreme violence among primates is rare. The incidents described in the book stuck in the biologists’ minds because they illustrate how aggression can influence ape society. They stuck in my mind too because, infrequent as they are, these are clearly not…
