Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals (Paperback)

A primate researcher, the author has spent many years studying baboon behaviour. Those who fear comparison with other primates may be uncomfortable with Sapolsky's conclusions. The material he draws upon for support, however, shows how universal many of our own behaviours are among our close relatives. In this book, he takes up three themes - why searching for "a gene for" any specific behaviour or illness is doomed to failure; what the body contributes to our personality; and what society contributes in determining our "selves". Each section is preceded by an introductory essay, explaining the significance of the topics discussed.

In the first section he severely condemns those who want to lock behaviour to genetics. That's an admirable end, but the selections weighed in his judgement are nearly all media accounts. Simplifying human behaviour issues sells magazines and newspapers, and his references to "those scientists" who appear to have advocated "nature over nurture" vapourise when you look for them in the text. Still, the elmination of "gene centrism" is an admirable ambition. That is what the public too often sees and the illusion needs expulsion from the collective public consciousness. He reminds us that many "genetic" drives are environmentally triggered. Whatever the rules are genes function under, they aren't rigid ones. Environment contributes, often in a major way.

In the second section, Sapolsky ranges over body-behaviour issues. From the "Twinky Defence" to definitions of dreaming, he explores how the body and brain relate to influence the mind. Emotions result from the cascades of hormones flowing through our bodies. The brain triggers many of these, but the body sends messages to the brain using that chemical medium. While all this may leave the impression that we are almost helpless observers of what these molecular signals drive us to do, the author reminds us that the "big" part of the brain, the frontal cortex, grants us a level of control denied most other animals.

Finally, we are treated to an overview of our relation to the departed. Why is there such an intense drive in humans to deal with the dead? That is most ardently expressed when the body is missing. There are bizarre cases noted here, not the least of which is story of the rituals imposed when the US Navy retrieved the bodies of drowned Japanese fishermen. Yet more intriguing are the cases of mothers finding ways to have their children hospitalised. Each time the mother visited a recovering child, there was a relapse.

That Sapolsky's style is brisk, even fervent at times, shouldn't obscure the fact that there's much in here most of us need to know. When you and your spouse argue, who concedes first? Why is this so? Daily life situations are biologically examined, without the rhetoric that might turn this into a campaign document. There is a message: that we need to learn more about what provides our emotional makeup, from domestic disputes to "over-mothering". Read this and find out what. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]