“Pithecophilia” is the story of a lifelong infatuation with apes—how a grainy photograph of a mountain gorilla on a darkroom tray sent one kid chasing primates across the world. Through encounters with gibbons singing in Asian forests, orangutans materializing from the green in Sumatra, and mountain gorillas in the Virunga Volcanoes, Robert Louis DeMayo traces how wonder, chance meetings, and old books shape a life of exploration. Woven through are the ghosts of earlier explorers like Carl Akeley—who helped create the Hall of African Mammals by killing the very animals he revered—and the modern work of The Explorers Club. This is not a technical lecture, but an evening of stories about what makes apes so arresting, why they stay with us, and how curiosity can quietly pull a person—and sometimes a culture—toward caring.