In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky, one of the most renowned scientific disseminators today, tells the fascinating story of how he left the comforts of the university to share his field work with a troop for more than two decades. of mischievous baboons in the African savannah. Only a young idealist could land in the heart of Kenya, hoping to find an animated version of what he had seen and studied until then at the Museum of Natural Sciences in New York. Memories of a primate combines serious scientific observations with ironic comments about the challenges and pleasures of life in the Serengeti jungle. Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities and surrealist encounters at gunpoint, while accounting for the invasion of the tourist mentality in the remotest vestiges of virgin Africa. During his research on alterations in the nervous system of primates facing stressful situations, he falls head over heels in love with these animals, which at first seem aggressive and quite unfriendly, and returns to them summer after summer. Isolated in the savanna, without light and without water, but with humor and curiosity always well disposed, Sapolsky becomes a keen observer of the animal and human fauna of the place.