84 books like Walking with the Great Apes

Farley Mowat once declared: “I never let facts get in the way of a good story.” I have read Never Cry Wolf as fiction many times, even though its author pretended it was factual. As a writer interested in Canada’s north, Mowat’s universe is an obvious choice for me. The inclusion of Inuit characters is also quite appealing. In this book, a naturalist studies Arctic wolves in a makeshift camp in northern Manitoba and deals with the ridiculous expectations of the bureaucrats who sent him out there to fend for himself. He discovers that contrary to public opinion, wolves are not responsible for the decimation of caribou herds, humans are. Some elements are exaggerated for comic effect, and as one of Canada’s best storytellers, Mowat delivers on laughs. 

When an elephant family wanders outside the bounds of the Amboseli Reserve in Kenya, an adolescent daughter is shot by poachers. Cynthia Moss has spent decades studying these creatures in the wild and was among the first to document their rituals of mourning and burial so similar to human rites of parting. “They stood around Tina’s carcass, touching it gently with their trunks and feet. Because it was rocky and the ground was wet, there was no loose dirt, but... when they managed to get a little earth up they sprinkled it over the body.” Even more poignant because Moss describes the ceremony in the most scientific terms.  

This German zoologist discovered “imprinting” in birds and was often photographed waddling in his backyard, followed by a gaggle of goslings who mistook him for their mother. Lorenz was convinced that avian species experience emotions like love and grief, describing the mating rituals of jackdaws in terms touchingly evocative of human sweethearts. “Remarkable and exceedingly comical is the difference in eloquence between the eye-play of the wooing male and that of the courted female: the male jackdaw casts glowing glances straight into his loved one’s eyes, while she apparently turns her eyes in all directions other than that of her ardent suitor. In reality, of course, she is watching him all the time!”

Goodall is part scholar and part saint, a scientist seer. When her husband Derek Bryceson died after a protracted battle with cancer, Jane was spiritually bereft. Following a bleak year of grief, she encountered a mystical moment of healing.  “It seemed to me, as I struggled afterward to recall the experience, that self was utterly absent: I and the chimpanzees, the earth and trees and air, seemed to merge, to become one with the spirit power of life itself.” In that window of altered understanding, time slowed. Perception sharpened. Space seemed more spacious. The forest and its wild creatures, she found, had given her the peace that passes understanding.

I read this book as a young adult and immediately passed it on to all my friends. This book is a popular explanation of sociobiology (sometimes called behavioral ecology) that focuses on how evolution might be selected for aggression. 

It is one of the most compelling explorations of why evolutionary biology is so important for the average person to understand. Ironically, it is exactly the kind of thing that Stephen Jay Gould hated–he was a staunch opponent of sociobiology, partly because he feared the potential social implications.

But here, I think Gould was wrong and Wrangham largely correct. It is simply a fact that males are more violent (in every society ever studied), and understanding why so that we can attenuate its effect might be one of the most important things a society can do. In a clear and reasonable voice, this book makes the argument for sociobiology difficult to… show more.

A graphic novel about three intrepid, ground-breaking scientists, working far from home.

Although aimed at kids of 12+ this is well worth reading with younger kids, too. Wicks’ cartooning is clear and vivid, and Ottaviani captures the distinct voices of his three subjects beautifully. Wicks keeps the page grids simple and uses colour effectively to tell the reader which of her subjects they’re ‘hearing’ on the page.

It’s easy to follow and the ethological work of Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas truly benefits from comics’ ability to depict sequential movement and, in this case, behaviour.

Bonus: Wicks worked on a book about Mary Anning, too (text by Sarah Glen Marsh)!

The book and the original 1968 movie are worthwhile experiences that examine our society, our treatment of animals, and our treatment of each other by creating a planet in which the roles of humans and apes are swapped. The screenplay was written by Oscar-winner Michael Wilson and Emmy-winner Rod Serling and adds a legendary ending that was the talk of the neighborhood kids when I was growing up. It created a powerful symbol of mankind’s possible eventual destruction that stayed with me over the years.

The 2001 remake of the movie stayed fairly true to the original movie but was a bit slow because of its many side stories. The second remake in 2011 had amazing special effects but made the disturbing point that humans have become a destructive society that must be abolished by the apes. While the original message was to treat animals and each other better, the… show more.

The discovery of the diminutive hominin Homo floresiensis, a.k.a. the “Hobbit,” was a sensation in paleoanthropology–one that was anticipated by the fieldwork of cultural anthropologist Gregory Forth. Stories of creatures of similar attributes were taken as descriptions of real encounters with an “empirical” entity rather than merely figures of folklore.

This book has been a case study in the realization of a paradigm shift in how human evolution is envisioned–one branch of a bushy family tree, accompanied by multiple parallel branches, i.e., relict hominoids. 

John Green combines the spirited curiosity of an investigative reporter with the incisive logic of the argument of a rhetorician and the articulation of a wordsmith.

I found that he skillfully painted the historical and anecdotal context for this intriguing mystery as an adept journalist, drawing me into the very scene, to become part of the actual experience. He also went to lengths to make the evidentiary case for the scientists to acknowledge and seriously consider the proposition. With that determination, he promoted and sponsored the launch of a venue to provide a platform for the dissemination of scholarly publications exploring the question of relict hominoids, with me as the editor-in-chief.

This is my only other fiction pick. I read this many years ago, when it was new, but it stayed with me. We see a lot of relationships between people and dogs or people and horses, but this is a novel about a girl and a group of bonobos. That’s an interesting twist on the human/animal relationship, because other primates are so similar to us in their intelligence and approach to the world. They are mostly helpless against human forces, but then again so are young girls. The bonds formed in this book are worth the price of admission, and the suspense is high throughout.