Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Robert Ardrey" in English language version.
... the longest flash forward in the history of movies: three million years, from bone club to artificial satellite, in a twenty-fourth of a second.
For example, he gives the impression that he is constantly exploring Africa, watching lions with George Schaller, or chatting with the world's greatest experts about elephants. He tells us that he "made a general survey of predatory communities" in Africa in 1968, but his ignorance of lions is so great that he misunderstands most of what he sees, reads, or is told. For example, one afternoon, Ardrey and his wife roused a lioness "a few hundred yards" from a herd of browsing impala. Two of the impala came over to see the lioness as it sought another sleeping place, while the others "never for a moment stopped eating." Ardrey was amazed at this, but decided that he could not say that the impala were "suicidal" since the lioness was so sleepy. Then he adds, "Nevertheless, one can state in very nearly mathematical terms the survival value of approaching or fleeing the presence of a lion of unknown antagonism if you are an impala." This is typical of the ponderous way Ardrey covers his ignorance. Despite his claims of intimacy with Schaller, who studied lions in Africa over three years, 1966-1969, Ardrey apparently does not know that killing by a lion (1) is not motivated by "antagonism"; (2) almost never takes place in the middle of the day; (3) is never directed at an animal which is looking at the lion; and (4) the attack never is made from a distance of over 40 to 50 yards. Ardrey will find these rules stated by R. D. Estes in Natural History for February and March 1967 or by Schaller in National Geographic for April 1969. The latter says, "The lion must stalk to within a few feet of a potential victim before its rush has much chance of success. Prey animals are fully aware of the lion's limitations. They have learned how near to a lion they may wander without danger of attack—usually to within about 120 feet. This leads to ludicrous situations . . . A visible lion is a safe lion." Need I add that Ardrey's "suicidal" impala were about 500 feet from danger. It is true that Ardrey has read a great deal about animal behavior, but he never seems to grasp what it all means, and his biases prevent him from seeing what is really there.
Drawing heavily from the work of Robert Ardrey, controversial sociologist and author of 'African Genesis' and 'The Territorial Imperative,' Peckinpah ascribed to the belief that man is by nature territorial, brutal and elementally animal.
Most Worked With: 1. Peter Ustinov 2. Pandro S. Berman 3. Raoul Walsh 4. Van Heflin 5. Angela Lansbury 6. Christopher Kent 7. Frank Allenby 8. Gene Kelly 9. George Sidney 10. Gladys Cooper
Equally comfortable dealing with literary editors such as Bennett Cerf or moguls like Darryl F. Zanuck, he also retained his credibility in the intellectual realm by authoring texts on anthropology, history, and sociology that remain read decades after their publication. The widening dates between Ardrey's film projects came as a result of his increasing literary activity, as he began generating screenplays and novels on his own in the early 1950s and subsequently returned to his academic training in anthropology. From the end of the 1950s, he kept his oar in both fields, film and academia, and occupied a virtually unique position in the Hollywood pecking order because of his dual career. In 1962, he took on the daunting task of turning the World War I-era novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into relevant entertainment for the early 1960s, authoring the screenplay for Vincente Minnelli's gargantuan 1962 all-star release.
... the longest flash forward in the history of movies: three million years, from bone club to artificial satellite, in a twenty-fourth of a second.
