Preface

Primatology has come of age. Nonhuman primates are now used in many biological and biomedical disciplines; the number of animals used, the number of publications and of yearly meetings on primates increases steadily. This trend has been slow, and its maturation is welcome; but it poses two grave problems. First, the often promiscuous and lamentable use of these animals without a clear knowledge and appreciation of their value and hence of the care they require has seriously threatened the survival of many species. In the past (and, unfortunately, too often in the present), biomedical scientists have demanded and used large numbers of these animals as if they were laboratory rats. Added to this literally “care-less’’ lack of regard for their lives and well-being is the attitude that experi- mental observations on primates are somehow more prestigious or mean- ingful than those on other animals, even when such studies barely meet the standards required of the biological sciences. The increasing demand for experimental nonhuman primates engendered by this status mentality has placed many of them on the growing list of endangered species. Since primatologists are almost the only scientists to be aware of this danger, the real responsibility in the scientific community for safeguarding dwin- dling populations of feral primates rests squarely on them. It is they who must generate concerted action at congresses and must assume the moral responsibility and direction of preserving wild and captive populations of these animals and of insisting that they be used as special beings.

The second unhappy offshoot of the growth and maturation of the field of primatology is the size and quality of national and international meetings of primatologists. With proliferation of primatological studies and the continuing accumulation of information, the traditional organiza- tional format is no longer effective. Basically unselective and too crowded for any social interaction or meaningful interchange of scientific informa- tion, that traditional type of convention has had its day and, like all else that is outmoded and useless, had best be avoided in the future. Aware of the need to revamp the structure of the biennial Congresses of the Inter- national Primatological Society, the Chairman and Organizing Committee of the Fourth International Congress of Primatology (IPC), held in Port- land, Oregon, in August, 1972, had the delicate task of facing up to the major issue of communication and of focusing on the important and excluding the peripheral. Thus the format they chose, which included the addition of innovative informal seminars and film sessions, was in some respects a departure from that of the three previous Congresses.

At the core of the 1972 program were four day-long symposia - Primate Behavior, Craniofacial Biology, Reproductive Behavior, and Medi- cine and Pathology. The comprehensive papers presented in these sym- posia will be published in 1973 in four separate volumes by S. Karger. In each of these areas, which identify and channel four of the mainstreams of primatological investigation, speakers reviewed the various facets of their topics at some length and fielded questions from the floor. If this program emphasis on thorough exposition of a few areas was as successful as the planners had hoped, the organizers of future Congresses of the Society may want to follow it, choosing other subjects as major themes, for example, Human Evolution, Molecular Biology, Neurophysiology. Alter- nating major themes every two years should help to bring the important areas of research into clear focus; smaller contributions can, of course, continue to be given in the form of short, original data reports.

The short papers in these Proceedings were presented in the various sessions that made up the rest of the Congress program. They were selected for their content of original data; an attempt was made to avoid reviews and theoretical discussions. Most of them are printed here, in most cases in the groupings and in the order in which they were presented. The con- current scheduling, wherever possible, of only one traditional short-paper session with a symposium was intended to cut down appreciably on the usual confusion and haphazard attendance at these meetings. Happily there was even some evidence of the old fire, the once accepted, but more recently discredited, public dissent over scientific issues.

With communication and contact as the main goals, a special effort was made for the first time to encourage younger scientists to attend. As a result of this encouragement and in some cases of financial assistance from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, some 150 undergraduate and graduate students from the United States and abroad attended; several appeared on the program. Eager, serious, and very bright, these students made their own unique contributions to the Congress, chief of which was the assurance that with them the continuity of primatological research is secure. They, in turn, cannot have helped but be impressed by the solid scholarship and worth of the work of older scientists, of which I will cite but one example: the Congress address of Professor Sherwood L. Washburn of the University of California, Berkeley, to whom the Fourth IPC was dedicated. It is printed in full at the begin- ning of these Proceedings and serves as a remarkably appropriate intro- duction to them.

WILLIAM MONTAGNA, General Chairman Fourth International Congress of Primatology, and Director, Oregon Regional Primate Research Center