How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species

by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth

Book Overview

Cheney and Seyfarth enter the minds of vervet monkeys and other primates to explore the nature of primate intelligence and the evolution of cognition.

"This reviewer had to be restrained from stopping people in the street to urge them to read it: They would learn something of the way science is done, something about how monkeys see their world, and something about themselves, the mental models they inhabit."--Roger Lewin, Washington Post...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226102459
• ISBN13: 9780226102450
• Release Date: December 1990
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

What Can a Monkey Know?

I read this book in connection with graduate coursework under Seyfarth at the University of Pennsylvania. Cheney and Seyfarth describe a fascinating line of research on primates, mainly but not solely their own work on vervet monkeys. The goal is to form an account of the mind of the nonhuman primate -- how much do they understand about themselves, about other minds, and about the world?I think that these are questions that fascinate almost all of us. What would it be like to be very nearly as intelligent as a human being, but to lack language (not merely a means of communication but also a way of formulating knowledge -- therefore a modality of knowing)? It is, of course, impossible ever to understand as a monkey understands or to feel as a monkey feels, but there is no better way to learn what a monkey can know or feel than Cheney and Seyfarth's engaging book.