Comparative Vertebrate Cognition: Are Primates Superior to Non-Primates?

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This book explores afresh the long-standing interest, and emphasis on, the ‘special’ capacities of primates. Some of the recent discoveries of the higher cognitive abilities of other mammals and also birds challenge the concept that primates are special and even the view that the cognitive ability of apes is more advanced than that of nonprimate mammals and birds. It is therefore timely to ask whether primates are, in fact, special and to do so from a broad range of perspectives. Divided into five sections this book deals with topics about higher cognition and how it is manifested in different species, and also considers aspects of brain structure that might be associated with complex behavior. It will become apparent to the reader that researchers are only at the beginning of the search to find out whether primates are special and, of course, by ‘special’ is meant not just different, which applies to all biological categories, but ‘better’ in the ephemeral sense of being more like us and being cognitively superior to all other species. This volume, voicing the opinions of some leading primatologists, ethologists, psychobiologists, neuroscientists and anthropologists, is not speaking from the standpoint of a political engagement with primates but of a scientific engagement with primates in relation to all other species.