A Primate`s Memoir

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to ol` Norm.

Norm was a Macaca iris monkey living in the University of California Berkeley`s primate research facility, which was tucked into the the hills above the campus. For a class on primate social behavior, I spent many hours every week observing and taking notes on a group of about 25 macaques.

As the No. 2 male, Norm was subservient only to a lumbering, unsavory thug named Don. I decided to concentrate on Norm`s behavior relative to his proximity to Don: How did Norm`s actions differ when Don was close by, as opposed when he was 40 or 50 feet away?

Norm made sure that, most of the time, Don wasn`t close by. Whenever he`d amble into the vicinity, Norm would find it necessary to participate in goings-on on the far end of the enclosure, or maybe scurry off to examine an odd speck of dust over yonder. I empathized; that would have been my strategy, but exactly. I also liked it that Norm rarely whomped on any of the smaller monkeys. The closing, shamelessly anthropomorphic line to the abstract for my term paper was "Norm is a nice guy."

Not long thereafter, my burning ambition to get into a Ph.D. program and become a physical anthropologist was doused by the flood of desire never to be a student again as long as I lived. I have, however, retained an interest in primatology and human evolution, and followed developments from a safe, undemanding, nonprofessional distance.

But my almost-was history makes it difficult to view Robert M. Sapolsky`s "A Primate`s Memoir: A Neuroscientist`s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons" (Scribner, 304 pages) from a dispassionate, critical perspective, for within the first couple-of-dozen pages I sensed that Sapolsky had set to vibrating an exceptionally resonant chord in my very soul, and that "A Primate`s Memoir" was on its way to becoming One of My All-Time Favorite Books Ever in the Whole Wide World.

"I joined the baboon troop during my twenty-first year," writes Sapolsky in his opening line. "I had never planned to be a savannah baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla."

But the nature of his research project - stress-related disease - sent him to study baboons in Kenya`s Serengeti, where he promptly assessed himself as a "transfer male." (Adolescent male baboons usually defect to other troops, where there are unrelated, or at least more distantly related females, and males who don`t know their weaknesses: can`t go to his left, no outside shot, etc.)

Sapolsky, now a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, theorized that animals hung up on the more precarious rungs of the baboon social ladder would show more signs of stress-related disease. His project required him to tranquilize baboons via blow dart, in order to take blood samples. It`s not easy.

You have to get in close. You have to estimate your target`s weight accurately in order to prepare the proper dosage of tranquilizer. You have to hit your target and not, say, your target`s aunt. You have to dart him when he`s not looking, if you ever want to dart him again. You have to dart him when none of his antagonists is close enough to start a fight, because he`ll notice that your guy is getting groggy, and rip him to pieces (the canine teeth of an adult male baboons are bigger than those of a lion).

You also have to dart him when he`s not about to give chase to a young impala and follow the terrified beast into a hole in the thicket, which would mean that you would have to follow both animals into the hole in order to 1) keep the impala from kicking your drugged-up guy to death, and 2) keep your guy`s competitors from following him into the hole and tearing him half-a-dozen new ones; and, once in the hole, you`d have to hope that 3) your guy isn`t still awake enough to sink those lion-plus canines into you, that 4) the other baboons don`t come into the hole and tear you a half-a-dozen new ones, and that 5) the impala doesn`t kick you to death; and finally, 6) you`d have to figure out how to get the impala out of the hole some back way in order to distract the gang of shrieking baboons storming the barricades in the front.

Sapolsky did, indeed, experience scenarios 1-6. None of his boyhood experiences in New York suggested any solutions. He learned that it is best to avoid this entire sequence of events.

In dealing with the constantly shifting hierarchy in "his" troop of baboons, Sapolsky describes the animals and their behavior in accessible, human terms, sketching fancifully and often uproariously. This device renders the situation always and instantly comprehensible to lay readers; makes it clear that he has not, in fact, succumbed to easy-way-out anthropomorphism; and entertains enormously. Here he tells of confusion in the troop in the months following the overthrow of a dominant male by a junta of smaller males, none of whom had what it took to assume the mantle of power:

"Chaos reigned. Everyone was scheming, spending hours forming coalitional partnerships that would collapse within minutes of their first test. Nearly 40 percent of the time, when it did collapse, the erstwhile partner would end up on the other side. The number of fights went through the roof, as did the rate of injuries. Nobody ate much, nobody was grooming, sex was forgotten. Public works projects were halted and mail service became unreliable."

Sapolsky weaves his baboon chapters among his various adventures with primates of his own species. Although he has great affection for his neighbors, the Masai, for example, even taking a deep breath and joining them in their decidedly nonkosher blood-pudding ritual, and relating many an amusing (yet never condescending) anecdote, he also provides a glimpse from a different, less romantic but every bit as valid perspective - that of the farmers and ranchers whom the Masai have bullied for centuries.

As a young researcher - most of these events took place a couple of decades ago - Sapolsky traveled to many remote areas of Africa, usually semi-broke and on his own. Some of these experiences are hilarious in the retelling; within these covers there are any number of one-and two-page classics that you`ll be unable to resist reading aloud to whomever sits, stands or lies nearest you at that very moment.

But more than a few are terrifying: At least twice, Sapolsky may have been held prisoner by a group of men he had found to travel with. (That it was hard to tell is both part of the tales` charm and part of their creepiness.) Once, it was with a drunken and at least semi-merry gang of imaginatively dressed hoodlums who took him on a multi-day forced march through the many bars in a small town. Another time, he found himself two-thirds of the way into the middle of nowhere with some nasty, thieving truck drivers who may have been plotting to murder him.

Sapolsky always figured he could talk his way out of anything, he tells us - until, during a coup, some Kenyan soldiers at a roadside checkpoint calmly robbed and beat him.

More than 300 pages, and I can come up with only two nits. Neither the author nor his editors are aware of the difference between "disinterested" and "uninterested." And ... no maps?

What makes "A Primate`s Memoir" such a ceaselessly brilliant work is Sapolsky`s facility for pushing his writing as far as it can safely go, and never a metaphor, a crack, an allusion further. His self-effacing self-portrait could easily turn into coy self-aggrandizement, but never does; his love for Africa and its many, unimaginably varied peoples remains convincingly unaffected throughout, free from even a hint of fawning; and his steely-eyed scientific rigor never allows his affection for the baboons even to consider venturing into mawkish.

Finally, as in most wonderful books, there is surprise and great drama. You`ll have to wait until the very end to learn the fate of Sapolsky`s baboons, and of his favorite, Benjamin - a nice guy, if I may call upon my almost-was area of expertise.

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Arthur Salm