Play and Evolution: Second Thoughts on the Behaviour of Animals.

Koenraad Kortmulder. Utrecht: International Books, pp.160, 1998. ISBN 90-5727-013-7. Paperback : £18.99.

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This book is not specially concerned with primates - it ranges over the whole Phylum Chordata - but it is essential reading for all concerned with the behaviour of animals including primates. It is the most original contribution to ethological thought in decades. Essentially the author has done for the dynamics of social behaviour what Sir D'Arcy did for morphology in his immortal Growth and Form (1917). As Kortmulder modestly puts it, we 'may recognize a shadow of the great man's work in my humble book'. The core of this book is the application to social behaviour and social groupings of the field concept, which has been so central for a century in studies of morphogenesis and regeneration, and which Von Holst and Paul Weiss applied to central nervous mechanisms and simple behaviour. Kortmulder is sophisticated about physical fields, and includes a detailed analysis of the analogy between a specific case of fish territorial behaviour and an electromagnetic field phenomenon. He conceives behavioural and social fields in terms of rhythms, relationships and exchangeability of patterns and individuals. Primatologists will readily see the value of a field approach to monkey bands in such studies as Vandenbergh's of rhesus band formation or Japanese studies of band splitting and re-formation in Japanese monkeys (Russell and Russell, 1978). The approach will have many advantages for the study of primate social behaviour in general.

From his field approach, and in his state space diagrams, Kortmulder develops a number of new concepts in social behaviour, such as radial and tangential orientation, symmetry and symmetry breaking, and behavioural expansion and constriction. A fascinating chapter discusses the adaptive Bauplan that makes up the characteristic behaviour of a species, with the causal links between its elements studied in a new way. This method could equally be applied to the Bauplan of a macaque or chimpanzee culture (Russell and Russell, 1990; McGrew, 1992). In a brief account, I cannot do justice to the subtlety, the unfailing originality, and the wealth of illustrative detail in this attractively written and quite un-put-downable book. If Kortmulder's ideas are followed up, it will immeasurably enrich the study of primate as of all animal behaviour.

References

McGrew, W.C. (1992). Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications for Human Evolution. Cambridge: University Press.
Russell, C. and Russell, W.M.S. (1978). Kinship in monkeys and man. 1. Matrilineal kinship and the social unit. Biology and Human Affairs 43, 1-31.
Russell, C. and Russell, W.M.S. (1990). Cultural evolution of behaviour. Netherlands Journal of Zoology 40, 745-762.
Thompson, W.D'A. (1917). On Growth and Form. Cambridge: University Press.