Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Neurobiology and the baboons

As a child, Robert M. Sapolsky wandered among museum dioramas, and fantasized about being a mountain gorilla. Instead of achieving that laudable goal, though, he grew up to receive his Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in biological anthropology from Harvard University, and his Ph. D. in neuroendocrinology -- the study of the interactions between the nervous system and the endocrine system. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Sapolsky) Because of the difficulties involved in studying human beings (getting blood samples for analysis during rush hour would present problems), Mr. Sapolsky decided to focus on a troop of baboons in the wild. He chose baboons because although baboons have so much in common physiologically with humans, many of the complicating variables of human social existence don't apply. As Mr. Sapolsky says in an interview published in The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/of-monkeys-and-men/3047/), baboons don't smoke, they don't drink, they all have exactly the same diet, they're all lean, they're all healthy. He chose to study wild animals because the caged life produces a profound difference in the type and intensity of hormones.

Stories of his first 20 or so years of field work on the Serengeti plains of Africa make up his book, A Primate's Memoir. (http://books.simonandschuster.com/Primate's-Memoir/Robert-M-Sapolsky/9780743202411) Mr. Sapolsky's wit is sharp, and some of his antidotes are knee-slapping funny. Others are poignant and thoughtful. The book is structured in four parts, each focusing on a specific era in the life of a baboon: The Adolescent Years; The Subadult Years; Tenuous Adulthood; and Adulthood. Each of the four parts begins with a chapter devoted to The Baboons. The rest of the subsections range widely over the joys and stresses of being a research student in Africa, including the people met and the privations dealt with.

One of the biggest distractions, however, is Mr. Sapolsky's linear view of evolution as moving toward an apex of human endeavor. It may simply be that since he is a human being writing for other human beings, his writing naturally tends to focus on human beings. The heavily anthropological tilt to the book might have been helped by a bit more insight into the evolution of the primates themselves, but then again, that would have been another book altogether, and since I'm not the author, I shouldn't presume to say what should have been written. I guess.