This volume of 38 chapters was compiled from contributions presented in several different paper sessions and symposia at the Tenth Congress of the International Primatological Society, held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1984. As might be surmised from the book's title, this is an eclectic collection. It contains reviews, essays, empirical studies, and theoretical contributions on many different aspects of primate behavior. In general, papers on related topics have been grouped together in each of the book's seven parts, though apparently this was not always possible. For instance, the two papers in Part I, which is labeled as an "introduction" to the book, deal with widely different issues. Mason discusses the difficulty of systematically defining and comparing complex behavioral patterns (what he refers to as "political" traits) across individuals or species. The other paper, by Rhine, presents a history of baboon research in Mikumi National Park with an accompanying discussion of problems and solutions that could be of use to workers at other field sites. These are both very interesting papers, but neither really serves as an introduction to the sections that follow.
Part I1 of the volume, "Primate Thinking," is nicely organized, beginning with a thought-provoking essay cum introduction by Candland and Kyes. The authors in this section have tackled one of the most difficult but fascinating areas of current research, that is, to what extent can and should the primate "mind" (intentionality, consciousness, awareness, cognition) be invoked to explain the behavior of nonhuman primates. Despite a lack of uniformity in terminology and some imprecision in definitions, all the authors apparently agree on the need for acknowledgment and study of the role of complex mental processes in primate behavior, as well as on the difficulties and dangers involved in inferring such processes from behavior itself.
The stated goal of the following section, "Primate Behaviour and Cognition in Nature," is, in fact, to assess how cognitive concepts might be applied to the study of natural behavior, particularly ranging and feeding behavior. A problem that emerges in this section is that not all of the papers actually take up the challenge and consider these behaviors from a cognitive viewpoint. For example, Andrews' paper on the contrasting feeding patterns of squirrel and titi monkeys focuses primarily on correlating foraging behavior with differences in the social behavior and mating systems of the two species. Also in this section, Whitehead analyzes the development of adult feeding selectivity in infant howling monkeys as a means of exploring two contrasting learning paradigms. These are thoughtful papers, but they make no use of a cognitive framework for the behaviors under examination. In