It was a dream-like time for young researchers and students like me. I helped build the homepage and attended the Kyoto Symposium on the social ecology of primates and cetaceans in 2005 hosted by Dr. Yamagiwa and Dr. Karczmarski. Many eminent cetacean and primate researchers whose names I only knew from scientific publications or books came to Kyoto and discussed dolphins and primates over sake.
At many certain international conferences, well-known researchers are usually surrounded by foreign, native English-speaking students, and I often missed opportunities to communicate with such researchers. I was encouraged to study dolphins and thought the comparison of dolphins and primates must be important. It is thus not by chance that I became a member of the current project to compare social cognition in primates and dolphins under Dr. Masaki Tomonaga of the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University. The book Primates and Cetaceans (2014) was prepared as a collection of several selected presentations from the Kyoto Symposium and two other symposia (the 9th International Mammalogical Congress in 2005 in Sapporo, Japan, and the 17th Biennial Conference of the Society for Marine Mammalogy in 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa).
As the editors noted in the Preface, a long time has passed since the first submission deadline, for several reasons. Not all manuscripts were submitted. The editors finally decided to make this book using only the papers accepted (originally for two books) into the present collection, which, unfortunately, is very different from the first well-organized book plan. That is why this book does not have a symmetrical comparative structure.
Some of the papers are true comparative reviews written by both primatologists and cetologists (e.g., Chapters 10, 19, 20, and 21), or by one or the other (e.g., Chapters 9, 15, and 18). Other chapters describe the methodologies of how to study animals (e.g., Chapters 17 and 18), and some are case studies or reviews of primates or cetaceans. Because of the long gap between the first and last submissions to the publication, not all of the chapters contain up-to-date information and references. The absence of an Afterword by Dr. Toshisada Nishida is regrettable, as he passed away in 2011.
Despite these shortcomings, the book Primates and Cetaceans contains a vast body of information and excellent reviews of and hypotheses on these diverse mammalian groups. Cetologists like me must be surprised at the advanced studies and hypotheses regarding primates, and primatologists can determine whether their knowledge and hypotheses are applicable to other animals, especially aquatic, carnivorous cetaceans.
This book, Primates and Cetaceans, would be of equal interest to independent primatologists and cetologists, and young researchers and students who seek study topics and/or hypotheses.
It is the very first direct comparison of primates and cetaceans, and thus, provides a starting point for possible collaboration between primatologists and cetologists. I want to note here that Dr. Teizo Ogawa, who is considered the pioneer of the comparative anatomy on cetaceans, already had a comparative viewpoint of dolphins and primates, and it was even described in this journal, Primates, in 1961 (Ogawa 1961).
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