The Evolution of Culture in Animals
By John Tyler Bonner. Original drawings by Margaret La Farge.
From the cover: “On the one hand, there is culture and on the other, biology; moreover, We (the people) have the former, and They (the animals) have the latter. Or so it is often said. Recently, however, the distinction has been blurred, as sociobiologists have become strikingly successful in interpreting complex animal social behavior in evolutionary (hence, biological) terms. Spurred by this success, several people have begun taking a new and controversial look at human culture, presupposing that it may also be strongly biological in some sense. In this simply written, brief yet elegant book, biologist Bonner looks in the other direction: he argues that many nonhuman animals experience culture, in one form or another.” —David P. Barash, The American Scientist
Princeton. Princeton University Press. 1990. 203p.