In the 4/11 New Scientist, a review by Adrian Barnett of Allison Jolly’s Thank You, Madagascar: The conservation diaries of Alison Jolly:
In exploring the female-dominated world of lemurs in Madagascar, Alison Jolly shed a unique light on a world as biologically rich as it is economically poor [Jolly died last year, at the age of 76]
The book has a lot of detail about these fascinating primates. In addition:
Jolly’s time in Madagascar began shortly after the country’s independence from France in 1960. Using diary entries, letters and emails, Thank You, Madagascar records the country’s tricky history, its biology and anthropology, the sociology of researchers, politicians and aid workers and how they all came together in conservation. This lens provides a unique insider’s account of major environmental efforts in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
An earlier lemur posting on this blog, “Communication among white-footed sportive lemurs” of 10/30/14, entertained readers with the name of the species as well as with the communication scheme, using “toilet trees”.
Madagascar is also well-known among linguists, thanks to the extensive fieldwork and publications by Edward Keenan and Elinor Ochs / Elinor Ochs Keenan on the national language, the Austronesian language Malagasy.
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