Liberating primatology

Among the many zoologies that have emerged over the last hundred years or so, primatology is astonishing in its reach and breadth of influence on other sciences and people’s thoughts. It is noteworthy for the cultural imprint it carries and the forceful reactions its practice engenders. Primatology is also a contested site for various disciplines and epistemologies. In addition, the field is remarkably place-specific in ways that are often unnoticed. We argue that a mainstream recognition of primatology’s diversity and the various ways in which culture impacts the practice of this science can help to liberate the field from attempts to impose particular methodologies, outlooks and theoretical frameworks on the discipline, and enable the field to make even greater contributions to human understanding. Primatology, or the study of nonhuman primates, occupies a unique place among the biological sciences. ‘A half-breed discipline’ as Whitten (1988) so aptly put it, it gathers within its fold a number of areas of study (ranging from morphology and molecular biology to behavioural psychology and animal studies) that spill over disciplinary boundaries in the approaches and techniques they employ. For example, studies on primate cognition and social behaviour routinely borrow theoretical paradigms from social psychology, research on monkey epidemiology is largely fuelled by human health concerns, and investigations into human–primate conflict interactions wield ethnography as a tool that permits a more in-depth understanding of the interface. Furthermore, studies on primates wrestle with the capacities of their study species to display rich and fulfilling moral and emotional lives, their sentience, languages and cultures. This also raises contemporary concerns on the personhood of primates and the implications of current understanding on the ethics of animal experimentation. That these research perspectives are uncommon for a zoological discipline is vividly brought home by a comparative view of other taxonomic zoologies. Ornithology, herpetology, cetology and even elephantology are more than respectable contenders in terms of number of practitioners or degree of specialization, and yet few branches of zoology can match the diversity of research or the multidisciplinarity that are characteristic of primatology. Why it is that primatology inspires such diversity in thoughts and passions regarding the animal taxa under study? Over the history of mankind, a wide variety of people, from philosophers and historians to poets, naturalists and scientists, have observed, described, eulogized and mocked primates through their writings. Certain groups of animals have been at the forefront of discussions that deal with issues beyond their zoological identity—for instance, companion and farm animals tend to take centre stage in debates on animal rights and welfare; yet, few animal taxa can compete with primate species in terms of the scientific attention that they have received from human beings. Most animal taxa are studied because they are good model systems to understand the expression of certain behavioural patterns (Lorenz and Tinbergen’s classic experiments on the greylag goose to investigate instinctive behaviours immediately come to mind) or because their life cycles, physiology or behaviours are fascinating or unusual in themselves (as in von Frisch’s investigations to understand communication among bees or Gilbert White’s fascination with earthworms). However, academic interest in primates, at least in Western science, goes beyond their zoological categorization as ‘animals’ and appears to be inextricably linked to their status as humanity’s ancestral relatives. By virtue of their biological connection to humans, primates occupy an anomalous position among animal species, one that is neither fully human nor fully animal, and this chimeric identity overwhelmingly defines their importance for science. The scientific import of primates is made abundantly clear by Adolph Schultz, one of the founding fathers of primatology, in his writings on primate anatomy and human evolution. Schultz’s studies reflect a departure from the earlier, almost prurient, curiosity about human-like primates to an acceptance of humanity’s taxonomic position amongst the primates, and he writes (1936):