The question is "How do monkeys see the world?" and the interesting answer of Cheney and Seyforth is that monkeys see and learn that A leads to B but don't know why. As they say,"An individual who cannot reflect upon his own knowledge to form hypotheses about what he knows, will almost by definition be unable to extend knowledge from one context to another".

This basic fact accounts for the lack of teaching of young monkeys. They have to learn by observation that A leads to B. The adult doesn't know that it knows anything so it is not surprising that it doesn't do any teaching. Monkeys live in a world of action and reaction without an understaqnding of what is happening.

Cheney and Seyfarth note that at least 70% of the deaths of vervet monkeys in Amboseli are from predation and that frequent predators are leopards and pythons. (top)

Their conclusion is mirrored in human development, where it is only at the relatively late age of 4-6 years that children can imagine another persons point of view (i.e. think in the abstract). This is shown in the important experiment by Wimmer and Penner (page 207) and seems to indicate that this is the developmental stage where monkeys and humans part company.

In my opinion this is a very valuable book, especially as the work was done over such along period and in the animals natural environment.