A convoluted road from biochemistry to clinical medicine to primatology

How does a physician become intimately involved with primatology? The story of my path is the story of serendipity and exposure to interdisciplinary research. Primatology encompasses many fields: anatomy, behavior, physiology, biochemistry, systematics and taxonomy, evolutionary biology, communication and linguistics, animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, clinical medicine and primatology, to name but a few. Cross-disciplinary efforts are perhaps best pursued as interdisciplinary. It became obvious that the various fields often shared a common language, but totally disparate in meaning. Past confusion in the dinosaur-bird controversy may have been related to attempts to navigate the subject as applied to dinosaurs, without actual training/experience in ornithology. That was only overcome with initiation of interdisciplinary efforts.