Sapolsky, Robert. A Primate's Memoir.

Sapolsky, Robert. A Primate's Memoir. Scribner, 2002. The title of Robert Sapolsky's a Primate's Memoir is a kind of a playful joke: on one hand, the author, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist and animal behaviorist is a primate, hence the name of Sapolsky's autobiography.

On the other hand, his book is also the tale of the primates he became acquainted with during his studies: because of his passion for baboons, Sapolsky's fortunes became intimately tied to a group of the species, to the point where he became an accepted, if lower-ranking member of their tribe. Sapolsky spent more than twenty years in southwestern Kenya, living and working with baboons. Four months out of every year was spent observing the parallels and distinctions between human and baboon behavior.

Sapolsky had little financial support from his university, lived on canned sardines and spaghetti, and when he was not physically threatened by the baboons, he found himself confronted with the dangers of politicians, bureaucrats, and charlatans in a land where life is cheap. Even though conditions were difficult at times, this was the cumulating effort of a lifetime dream that had begun when the author was a boy, staring at the images of primates in the Museum of Natural History and wishing that he could BE one of them.

"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon," begins Sapolsky's memoir (Sapolsky 3). He wanted to be a different kind of ape: "You make compromises in life; not every kid can grow up to become president or a baseball star or a mountain gorilla. So I made plans to join the baboon troop" (Sapolsky 4). Actually living amongst baboons taught Sapolsky the difference between himself and his beloved creatures very quickly, but only increased his fascination.

Sapolsky notes his early enthusiasm, not simply to be amusing or note the early nature of his passionate interest in primates, but also to underline the similarities between 'us' and the apes. Just like humans, apes appear to have their leaders, followers -- and misfits. "Still just emerging from my own festering adolescent insecurities, I had a difficult time not identifying utterly with Benjamin and his foibles…[Benjamin] stumbled over his feet a lot, always sat on the stinging ants..

He didn't have a chance with the females, and if anyone on earth had lost a fight and was in a bad mood, Benjamin would invariably be the one stumbling onto the scene at the worst possible moment" (Sapolsky 10). Apes are animals, yet seem intriguingly similar to ourselves, because of their closeness in the history of our evolution as a species. By studying the baboons, Sapolsky learns a great deal about himself and about human life, specifically the human response to stress and stress hormones.

Much to his surprise, the idea that testosterone and aggression leads to social dominance does not hold, according to his research findings. Instead, lower-ranking males often have the highest testosterone levels and exhibited the highest levels of stress: they are the "jerky" adolescent males of the group (Sapolsky 167). Dominant baboons, the most 'confident' members of the tribe, are the least stress-prone. In short, the alphas of the group are cool, confident leaders who are able to relax about the place in the hierarchy.

Low-stress, low-testosterone males were also more likely to show affection through social grooming while high-stress, high-testosterone males, just like their human counterparts, were more apt to suffer from stress-related diseases and exhibit aggressive and anxious behaviors (Sapolsky 167). Sapolsky came to the Kenyan baboon tribe assuming to find some commonalities between the animal kingdom and primates. However, establishing intimacy with the baboons was more difficult than he anticipated, and at first he found himself in the uncomfortable position of shooting darts with anesthetizing blow guns.

To compare the stress hormones between the different baboons required Sapolsky to behave almost like the type of big game hunter he despised.

First, he had to watch his subjects interact in a group, observe their stress-related behaviors or lack thereof, track his subjects down, put them to sleep with a dart, carry them to the lab, and then take blood measurements to study animals scientifically, humans must distance themselves from the animal world and subdue animals -- that is the paradox of being an animal lover driven to become a behaviorist.

The need for distance as well as affection when studying animals can be a difficult balance to achieve: are those who seem to get overly emotionally involved, like Diane Fossey, a woman with whom the young Sapolsky once wanted to work, although now he harbors mixed feelings for her anthropomorphic view of baboons. Yet even.