Primatologist, born in Dallas, Texas, USA. She was an instructor in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts (1973), then became a lecturer and fellow in biology at Harvard (19758). Appointed an associate at Harvard's Peabody Museum (1979), she concurrently joined the University of California, Davis as a professor (1984). She made major contributions to studies of the evolution of primate social behaviour, including feminist interpretations of female primate reproductive strategies in evolution and history.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (note: Hrdy is Czech for "proud") (born July 11, 1946) is a U.S. anthropologist and primatologist who has made several major contributions to evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.
Early life
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy was born on July 11, 1946 in Dallas, Texas, but she was raised in Houston.
Education
At age 16, Sarah attended an all girls college, Wellesley College, in Massachusetts, her mother's alma mater. It was here that she met her future husband Daniel Hrdy.
The Langurs of Abu
Sarah Hrdy first became interested in langurs during an undergraduate primate behavior class taught by anthropologist Irven DeVore in 1968. Trivers provided Hrdy with an introduction to a newly emerging outlook on the social world - that of sociobiology - which crystallized at Harvard during the early 1970's and shaped Hrdy's perspective on primatology in an enduring manner.
Hrdy's PhD thesis tested the hypothesis that overcrowding causes infanticide in langur colonies. She took off to Mount Abu in India to study Hanuman Langurs, and came to the conclusion that infanticide was independent of overcrowding - it was possibly an evolutionary tactic: When an outside male takes over a group, he usually proceeds to kill all infants. In addition, Hrdy began studying female langurs closely and soon found evidence that female primates had evolved sexual counter-strategies in order to gain protection. The male who is taking over has a very small window of opportunity to harvest his genes, and if the females are already weaning infants, it's likely that they won't ovulate again for another year. Female choice is subverted, as females are put under pressure to ovulate and are forced to breed with the infanticidal males. Hrdy theorized that by mating with as many males as possibly, particularly outside males who are not part of the colony, mothers are able to successfully protect their young, as males were unlikely to kill an infant if there was the slightest chance that it might be their own. The goal of the male langur is to maximize the proportion of his offspring, and according to Hrdy, a male who attacks his own offspring is rapidly selected against. While infanticide has been seemingly preserved across primate orders, Hrdy found no evidence to suggest that the human species has a 'genetic imperative' for infanticide.
In 1975 Hrdy was awarded her PhD for her research on langurs. In 1971 it was published in her second book, "The Langurs of Abu: Female and Male Strategies of Reproduction." The controversy in the anthropology realm that her research sparked was not surprising - the classic belief that primates act for the good of the group was discarded, and the field of sociobiology gained increasing support.
Hrdy's third book came out in 1981, entitled "The Woman That Never Evolved." Here, Hrdy expands upon female primate strategies. This book was selected by the New York Times as one of the Notable Books of 1981. In 1984, Hrdy co-edited "Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives."
In 1999, Hrdy published "Mother Nature - Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species." She places a sociobiological twist on maternal instinct, and places "human mothers and infants in a broader comparative and evolutionary framework" offering a new perspective on mother: infant interdependance. Hrdy's viewpoint is that there is no defined 'maternal instinct' as it depends on a number of variables, and is therefore not innate, as once thought. This is where the concept of allomothering comes in - relatives other than the mother, such as the father, grandparents, and older siblings, as well as genetically unrelated helpers, such as nannys, nurses, and daycares, who spend time with an infant, leaving the mother with more free time to meet her own needs.
Family Life
Although their research put great distance between them, with each often being at opposite sides of the world, in 1972, Sarah and Daniel married in Kathmandu. At the age of 31, Hrdy gave birth to her first daughter, Katrinka. Her second daughter, Sasha, was born in 1982, a week before Hrdy was supposed to present a paper at Cornell University.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and her husband currently reside in Northern California where they operate Citrona Farms, a walnut-producing property.
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