Book excerpt: Bringing together the knowledge of world experts on different aspects of primate auditory function, this book bridges the epistemological gap between primate ethologists and auditory neurobiologists. Leading ethologists, comparative psychologists, and neuroscientists who have developed new experimental approaches apply their methods to a variety of issues dealing with primate vocal behavior and the neurobiology of the primate auditory system. The synthesis of ethological and neurobiological approaches to primate vocal behavior presented in this book will yield a rich understanding of the acoustic and neural bases of primate audition and shed light on the evolutionary precursors to speech.