ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am extremely indebted to my wonderfully talented editor, Daniela Rapp. Her talent, guidance, and assistance have made this process an exceptional experience.

It goes without saying that I owe an enormous amount of gratitude to Lion Country Safari and everyone involved with creating and maintaining this wonderful place. From the extremely dedicated staff to the happy and healthy animals, there is no other place like it on earth.

Terry Wolf has been indispensable to this project. His accounts of the early years of the park have long fascinated me. He was kind enough to recount everything as I began this project and to take time to read everything that I wrote.

The people that worked with me on the chimpanzee islands during these years showed remarkable patience with everything I was doing. I’d like to point out that it was Michele Schwartz Matias who first notified me that Higgy was on the boat.

Throughout this entire period, I worked with Kelly Greer Froio, whose care and affection for these particular chimpanzees was an inspiration for this project.

Steve Ross and the research staff at the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Lawrence E. Fischer Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes were tremendously helpful in serving as local collaborators and facilitating the Chicago portion of my research. Also at the Lincoln Park Zoo, everyone at the Regenstein Center for African Apes was crucial to this project. Without the help of both Dominick Travis and Jill Moyse, I may never have recorded any decent samples of Hank’s group.

I thank Ashleigh Kandrac for her wonderful artwork.

My research assistant Christina T. Cloutier sat in the mud for hours recording chimp vocalizations. She also spent a very tedious evening categorizing vocal spectrograms. I am extremely grateful to her for being part of this project from the beginning.

I would like to thank Andrew J. Marshall for providing me with the initial recordings of the Lion Country Safari chimps from 1995.

I would like to acknowledge the continued guidance of Douglas C. Broadfield with this project and beyond.

I thank Susan Love Brown for convincing me to write this book in the first place.

The direction given by Prisca Augustyn at the beginning of this project was instrumental to its success.

My family is the best one could ask for. Lina and Gavin have been there throughout everything, serving as sounding boards, offering suggestions, and showing remarkable patience for this and other projects. Everything is better when they are around.

Finally, none of this would have ever occurred without my agent, Jesseca Salky, who was able to look through my chaotic jumbles and understand exactly what it was I was trying to do with this book.