No. 3662 PRIMATE BIOLOGY—NAPIER 7 
ture, genetics, behavior, and ecology for as many different species of 
primates as possible. 
Professor Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark in an address to anthropologists 
in 1959 discussed the evolution of a new discipline. He observed that 
all branches of science in their neonatal stages passed through a 
collecting and cataloging phase. As far as primate biology is con- 
cerned, these preliminaries must be regarded as an essential stock- 
taking exercise during which the language and methodology of the 
subject must develop and the basic facts of primate biology are 
collected, synthesized, and disseminated. Primate biology is still, 
strictly speaking, in this phase. We still need to find out what it is 
all about, what we know, what we don’t know, what is relevant, and 
what is totally irrelevant. Primate biology needs a plan, a blueprint 
from which to build a significant and durable structure. 
Diminishing Primate Stocks 
High on the priorities list of a primate research program should be 
studies directed toward the understanding of the captive primate. 
Before the end of this century there will be only a few natural popu- 
lations of primates, living undisturbed lives, left in Africa, Asia, or 
Latin America. The majority of nonhuman primates will be captive 
in one sense or another. They may be under close restraint in medical 
laboratories, in zoos, in breeding ranches in the tropics, in free-ranging 
colonies in temperate zones, on isolated islands, or in reservations and 
game parks, but captive, nevertheless. This gloomy prognosis is the 
inevitable result of extrapolation from three unrelated trends: firstly, 
the ever increasing deforestation that results from agricultural devel- 
opment in tropical countries; secondly, the widespread native habit 
of killing monkeys for food, particularly in West Africa, where they 
constitute a vital source of animal protein; and thirdly, the exorbitant 
rate of consumption of primates by research scientists. Importation 
of monkeys into the United States during F.Y. 1966 has been esti- 
mated to have exceeded 100,000 individuals; the vast majority, it can be 
assumed, ended up in biomedical research laboratories. This rate of 
consumption could lead rapidly to extinction of certain populations 
in the wild: monkeys simply do not breed at this rate. Rhesus monkeys 
and the common langur (Presbytis entellus) already are showing signs 
of depletion in certain regions of Asia. Southwick, Beg, and Siddiqi 
(1961), who carried out a population study of rhesus monkeys in 
1959-1960 in the Uttar Pradesh province of India, observed a marked 
shortage of juveniles in many troops. 
The golden tamarin (Leontideus rosalia) is said to be near extinction 
in Brazil although the blame in this instance cannot be laid at the 
