Note to editors: Friderun Ankel-Simons can be reached at 919-309-1601
DURHAM, N.C. -- Like mapping a sometimes trackless jungle, primatologist Friderun Ankel-Simons, in her new book Primate Anatomy, has mounted an exhaustive expedition into the complexities of the form and function of humans' closest relatives. And like any good scientific expedition, she has returned from her journey with much knowledge, but also many unanswered questions.
Published this month by Academic Press, the book emphasizes how much humans have yet to learn about their own family tree, even as they hack away at its branches by causing widespread extinctions, said Ankel-Simons.
"We are destroying the very creatures that we need to study to find out who we are," she said. "This planet doesn't need us. But we need our planet to survive, so we have to take care of it."
Ankel-Simons, who has long worked with her husband primatologist Elwyn Simons, scientific director of the Duke Primate Center, has drawn heavily for her book on new findings from the center's living lemurs and other prosimians, as well as its extensive primate fossil collection developed by Simons. For example, the book discusses new lemur species, such as the agile golden crowned sifaka that was first discussed and described by Simons only in 1988.
"Among his other achievements, Elwyn's negotiations with the government of Madagascar opened the country for scientific research in 1981, after a long hiatus," said Ankel-Simons. "Then, many scientists began working there, increasing the information about lemurs enormously." Thus, said Ankel-Simons, the new book, which is a follow-up to an earlier edition published in 1983, contains a much larger section about lemurs.
Besides detailed explanations of the anatomy, locomotion, diet and other data about a multitude of primates, the book also highlights the many controversies and mysteries in the field.
For example, even after many decades of study, primatologists still do not agree whether the tarsier -- a small, round-faced, goggle-eyed primate found on islands in Southeast Asia -- is to be ranked with higher primates such as monkeys.
"Looking at the data, it seems obvious that tarsiers are strange, unique little beasties that nobody would say could be related to higher primates," said Ankel-Simons. "But it's almost like a dogma to some people that they are." Settling such controversies is complicated by the lack of data on the little animals, which are rare and extremely difficult to breed in captivity.
In another case, noted Ankel-Simons, scientists had categorized a small South American monkey called a Callimico as a vertical clinger, because it was observed leaping between vertical bamboo stalks. However, when the animal was studied in forests with branched trees, it moved on all fours like any other monkey.
"I think we humans tend to compartmentalize too much," she said. "We want to have things fit in pigeonholes, and people try to make biology into an exact science, which it is not."
In general, said Ankel-Simons, her book shows that primates are highly adaptable, with flexible capacities that confound simple assumptions about their natural behavior.
"If you look at a horse, you can tell that it's never going to climb a tree. But primates are very different. A change in their environment can make an enormous difference in their behavior.
"Take our own locomotor apparatus; we're specialized for bipedal standing and walking. But it's amazing what else humans can do. We can swim, dance, climb, fly and drive cars. Our highly evolved brain and dextrous hands enable us to do all this and much more."
Ankel-Simons' own background demonstrates just such adaptability. Trained as a marine biologist in Germany and Denmark, she made the leap to primatology during post-graduate studies in Zurich, Switzerland. After considerable research and teaching in the field -- including authoring her first book on primate anatomy, in German -- she leaped again, traveling to the Peabody Museum at Yale University, where she met Simons. She also began work on an expanded English-language version of her book that was published in 1983.
The demands of profession and family delayed a major update and revision of the 1983 volume, but with the encouragement of her husband and colleagues, she set out to write it in 1995.
And after four years of hard work, including such disasters as the loss of the manuscript to a computer virus and the frying of her computer by lightning, she has at last made her latest leap into publication.