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2534) Primate

Gist

A primate is a member of the biological order Primates, which includes lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans. These mammals are characterized by highly developed brains, forward-facing eyes for stereoscopic vision, and flexible hands/feet with opposable thumbs, adapted for life in trees.

Primates are an order of mammals that includes humans, apes, monkeys, tarsiers, lemurs, and lorises. They are characterized by large brains, forward-facing eyes for 3D vision, grasping hands with opposable thumbs, and high intelligence. Most species are social and arboreal (tree-dwelling), adapted for complex environments.

Summary

Primates is an order of mammals, which is further divided into the strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and lorisids; and the haplorhines, which include tarsiers and simians (monkeys and apes). Primates arose 74–63 million years ago first from small terrestrial mammals, which adapted for life in tropical forests: many primate characteristics represent adaptations to the challenging environment among tree tops, including large brain sizes, binocular vision, color vision, vocalizations, shoulder girdles allowing a large degree of movement in the upper limbs, and opposable thumbs (in most but not all) that enable better grasping and dexterity. Primates range in size from Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, which weighs 30 g (1 oz), to the eastern gorilla, weighing over 200 kg (440 lb). There are 376–524 species of living primates, depending on which classification is used. New primate species continue to be discovered: over 25 species were described in the 2000s, 36 in the 2010s, and six in the 2020s.

Primates have large brains (relative to body size) compared to other mammals, as well as an increased reliance on visual acuity at the expense of the sense of smell, which is the dominant sensory system in most mammals. These features are more developed in monkeys and apes, and noticeably less so in lorises and lemurs. Some primates, including gorillas, humans and baboons, are primarily ground-dwelling rather than arboreal, but all species have adaptations for climbing trees. Arboreal locomotion techniques used include leaping from tree to tree and swinging between branches of trees (brachiation); terrestrial locomotion techniques include walking on two hindlimbs (bipedalism) and modified walking on four limbs (quadrupedalism) via knuckle-walking.

Primates are among the most social of all animals, forming pairs or family groups, uni-male harems, and multi-male/multi-female groups. Non-human primates have at least four types of social systems, many defined by the amount of movement by adolescent females between groups. Primates have slower rates of development than other similarly sized mammals, reach maturity later, and have longer lifespans. Primates are also the most cognitively advanced animals, with humans (genus Homo) capable of creating complex languages and sophisticated civilizations, while non-human primates have been recorded using tools. They may communicate using facial and hand gestures, smells and vocalizations.

Close interactions between humans and non-human primates (NHPs) can create opportunities for the transmission of zoonotic diseases, especially virus diseases including herpes, measles, ebola, rabies and hepatitis. Thousands of non-human primates are used in research around the world because of their psychological and physiological similarity to humans. About 60% of primate species are threatened with extinction. Common threats include deforestation, forest fragmentation, monkey drives, and primate hunting for use in medicines, as pets, and for food. Large-scale tropical forest clearing for agriculture most threatens primates.

Details

A primate, in zoology, is any mammal of the group that includes the lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans. The order Primates, including more than 500 species, is the third most diverse order of mammals, after rodents (Rodentia) and bats (Chiroptera).

Although there are some notable variations between some primate groups, they share several anatomic and functional characteristics reflective of their common ancestry. When compared with body weight, the primate brain is larger than that of other terrestrial mammals, and it has a fissure unique to primates (the Calcarine sulcus) that separates the first and second visual areas on each side of the brain. Whereas all other mammals have claws or hooves on their digits, only primates have flat nails. Some primates do have claws, but even among these there is a flat nail on the big toe (hallux). In all primates except humans, the hallux diverges from the other toes and together with them forms a pincer capable of grasping objects such as branches. Not all primates have similarly dextrous hands; only the catarrhines (Old World monkeys, apes, and humans) and a few of the lemurs and lorises have an opposable thumb. Primates are not alone in having grasping feet, but as these occur in many other arboreal mammals (e.g., squirrels and opossums), and as most present-day primates are arboreal, this characteristic suggests that they evolved from an ancestor that was arboreal. So too does primates’ possession of specialized nerve endings (Meissner’s corpuscles) in the hands and feet that increase tactile sensitivity. As far as is known, no other placental mammal has them. Primates possess dermatoglyphics (the skin ridges responsible for fingerprints), but so do many other arboreal mammals.

The eyes face forward in all primates so that the eyes’ visual fields overlap. Again, this feature is not by any means restricted to primates, but it is a general feature seen among predators. It has been proposed, therefore, that the ancestor of the primates was a predator, perhaps insectivorous. The optic fibres in almost all mammals cross over (decussate) so that signals from one eye are interpreted on the opposite side of the brain, but, in some primate species, up to 40 percent of the nerve fibres do not cross over.

Primate teeth are distinguishable from those of other mammals by the low, rounded form of the molar and premolar cusps, which contrast with the high, pointed cusps or elaborate ridges of other placental mammals. This distinction makes fossilized primate teeth easy to recognize.

Fossils of the earliest primates date to the Early Eocene Epoch (56 million to 41.2 million years ago) or perhaps to the Late Paleocene Epoch (59.2 million to 56 million years ago). Though they began as an arboreal group, and many (especially the platyrrhines, or New World monkeys) have remained thoroughly arboreal, many have become at least partly terrestrial, and many have achieved high levels of intelligence. It is certainly no accident that the most intelligent of all forms of life, the only one capable of constructing the Encyclopædia Britannica, belongs to this order.

By the 21st century the populations of approximately 75 percent of all primate species were falling, and some 60 percent were considered either threatened or endangered species. Habitat loss and fragmentation from logging, mining, urban sprawl, and the conversion of natural areas to agriculture and livestock raising are the primary threats to many species. Other causes of widespread population declines include hunting and poaching, the pet trade, the illegal trade in primate body parts, and the susceptibility of some primates to infection with human diseases.

General considerations:

Size range and adaptive diversity

Members of the order Primates show a remarkable range of size and adaptive diversity. The smallest primate is Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae) of Madagascar, which weighs some 35 grams (one ounce); the most massive is certainly the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), whose weight may be more than 4,000 times as great, varying from 140 to 180 kg (about 300 to 400 pounds).

Primates occupy two major vegetational zones: tropical forest and woodland–grassland vegetational complexes. Each of these zones has produced in its resident primates the appropriate adaptations, but there is perhaps more diversity of bodily form among forest-living species than among savanna inhabitants. One of the explanations of this difference is that it is the precise pattern of locomotion rather than the simple matter of habitat that governs overt bodily adaptations. Within the forest there are a number of ways of moving about. An animal can live on the forest floor or in the canopy, for instance, and within the canopy it can move in three particular ways: (a) by leaping—a function principally dictated by the hind limbs; (b) by arm swinging (brachiation)—a function particularly of the forelimbs; (c) by quadrupedalism—a function equally divided between the forelimbs and the hind limbs. On the savanna, or in the woodland-savanna biome, which substantially demands adaptations for ground-living locomotion rather than those for tree-living, the possibilities are limited. If bipedal humans are discounted, there is a single pattern of ground-living locomotion, which is called quadrupedalism. Within this category there are at least two variations on the theme: (a) knuckle-walking quadrupedalism, and (b) digitigrade quadrupedalism. The former gait is characteristic of the African apes (chimpanzee and gorilla), and the latter of baboons and macaques, which walk on the flats of their fingers. After human beings, Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae are the most successful colonizers of nonarboreal habitats.

The structural adaptations of primates resulting from locomotor differences are considered in more detail in the section Locomotion, but they do not prove to be very extensive. Primates are a homogeneous group morphologically, and it is only in the realm of behaviour that differences between primate taxa are clearly discriminant. It can be said that the most successful primates (judged in terms of the usual criteria of population numbers and territorial spread) are those that have departed least from the ancestral pattern of structure but farthest from the ancestral pattern of behaviour. “Manners makyth man” is true in the widest sense of the word; in the same sense, manners delineate primate species.

Distribution and abundance

The nonhuman primates have a wide distribution throughout the tropical latitudes of Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and South America. Within this tropical belt, which lies between latitudes 25° N and 30° S, they have a considerable vertical range. In Ethiopia the gelada (genus Theropithecus) is found living at elevations up to 5,000 metres (16,000 feet). Gorillas of the Virunga Mountains are known to travel across mountain passes at altitudes of more than 4,200 metres when traveling from one high valley to another. The howler monkeys of Venezuela (Alouatta seniculus) live at 2,500 metres in the Cordillera de Merida, and in northern Colombia the durukuli (genus Aotus) is found in the tropical montane forests of the Cordillera Central.

In habitat, primates are predominantly tropical, but few species of nonhuman primates extend their ranges well outside the tropics. The Barbary “ape” (Macaca sylvanus) lives in the temperate forests of the Atlas and other mountain ranges of Morocco and Algeria. Some populations of rhesus monkey (M. mulatta) extended until the middle of the 20th century to the latitude of Beijing in northern China, and the Tibetan macaque (M. thibetana) is found from the warm coastal ranges of Fujian (Fukien) province to the cold mountains of Sichuan (Szechwan). One of the most remarkable, however, is the Japanese macaque (M. fuscata), which in the north of Honshu lives in mountains that are snow-covered for eight months of the year; some populations have learned to make life more tolerable for themselves by spending most of the day in the hot springs that bubble out and form pools in volcanic areas. Finally, two western Chinese species of snub-nosed monkey, the golden (Rhinopithecus roxellana) and black (R. bieti), are confined to high altitudes (up to 3,000 metres in the case of the former and to 4,500 metres in the latter), where the temperature drops below 0 °C (32 °F) every night and often barely rises above it by day.

Although many primates are still plentiful in the wild, the numbers of many species are declining steeply. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), more than 70 percent of primates in Asia and roughly 40 percent of primates in South America, in mainland Africa, and on the island of Madagascar are listed as endangered. A number of species, particularly the orangutan, the gorilla, some of the Madagascan lemurs, and some South American species, are in serious danger of extinction unless their habitats can be preserved in perpetuity and human predation kept under control. The populations of several species number only in the hundreds, and in 2000 a subspecies of African red colobus monkey (Procolobus badius) became the first primate since 1800 to be declared extinct.

In the midst of these declines, the populations of some critically endangered primate species have increased. Concerted efforts to breed a type of marmoset, the golden lion marmoset (or golden lion tamarin; Leontopithecus rosalia), in captivity have been successful; reintroduction of that species into the wild continues in Brazil. The estimated number of western lowland gorillas (G. gorilla gorilla), a species thought to be critically endangered, increased when a population of more than 100,000 was discovered in 2008 in the swamps of the Lac Télé Community Reserve in the Republic of the Congo.

Natural history:

Reproduction and life cycle

The stages of the life cycle of primates vary considerably in duration. Among the most primitive members of the group, these stages are broadly comparable to those of other mammals of similar size. Higher in the phylogenetic scale, they are substantially extended. The greatest difference is in the duration of the infant and juvenile stages combined; the least is in the gestation period, which, despite the general belief, cannot be consistently correlated with adult body size. Gibbons, which weigh considerably less than macaques, have a 20 percent longer gestation period.

The clear trend toward prolongation of the period of juvenile and adolescent life is probably to be associated with the corresponding trend toward a progressive elaboration of the brain. The extended period of adolescence means that the young remain under adult (primarily maternal) surveillance for a long period, during which time the juvenile acquires, by example from its mother and peers, the knowledge that will allow it to become properly integrated as a fully adult member of a complicated social system. One might therefore expect a close correlation between the period of adolescence, the brain size, and the complexity of the social system; and, insofar as the latter factor can be assessed, this appears to be the case.

Breeding periods

The reproductive events in the primate calendar are copulation, gestation, birth, and lactation. Owing to the long duration of the gestation period, these phases occupy the female primate (among higher primates anyway) for a full year or more; then the cycle starts again. The female does not usually come into physiological receptivity until the infant of the previous pregnancy has been weaned.

Most lemurs and lorises show one or more discrete breeding seasons during the year, during which time they may undergo more than one reproductive estrous cycle (i.e., period of sexual activity). The breeding seasons are separated by periods of anestrus, which in bush babies and mouse lemurs are accompanied by changes in the skin of the external genitalia (vulva), which closes over, completely sealing the math. When living in the wild in the Sudan, the lesser bush baby (Galago senegalensis) has an estrus that occurs only twice yearly, during December and August. In captivity, however, breeding seasons may occur at any period in the year. In the wild, birth seasons are closely correlated with the prevailing climate, but in captivity under equable laboratory conditions, this consideration does not apply. For instance, in its native Madagascar, the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) has only a single breeding season during the year, conception occurring in autumn (April) and births taking place in late winter (August and September). However, in zoos in the Northern Hemisphere, a seasonal inversion occurs in which the birth period shifts to late spring and early summer. These examples indicate the influence of environmental factors on the timing of the birth seasons.

Reproductive cycles in tarsiers, apes, and many monkeys continue uninterrupted throughout the year, though seasonality in births is characteristic mainly of monkey species living either outside the equatorial belt (5° north and south of the Equator) or at high elevations in equatorial regions, where dry seasons and seasonal food shortages occur. Seasonality of births in macaques (genus Macaca species) has been documented in Japan, on Cayo Santiago in the Caribbean (where an introduced population thrives under seminatural conditions), and in India. Observations of langurs in India and Sri Lanka, of geladas in Ethiopia, and of patas monkeys in Uganda have also demonstrated seasonality in areas with well-marked wet and dry seasons. Those within the equatorial belt tend to display birth peaks rather than birth seasons. A birth peak is a period of the year in which a high proportion of births, but not by any means all, are concentrated. Equatorial primates such as guenons, colobus monkeys, howlers, gibbons, chimpanzees, and gorillas might be expected to show a pattern of births uniformly distributed throughout the year, but population samples are as yet too small to make this assumption, and some equatorial monkeys, such as squirrel monkeys (genus Saimiri), are strictly seasonal breeders. Even in humans, there is evidence of high birth peaks. In Europe, the highest birth rates are reached in the first half of the year; in the United States, India, and countries in the Southern Hemisphere, in the second half. This may, however, be a cultural rather than an ecological phenomenon, for marriages in certain Western countries reach a peak in the closing weeks of the fiscal year, a fact that undoubtedly has some repercussions on the birth period.

Gestation period and parturition

The period during which the growing fetus is protected in the uterus is characterized by a considerable range of variation among primate species, but it shows a general trend toward prolongation as one ascends the evolutionary scale. Mouse lemurs, for example, have a gestation period of 54–68 days, lemurs 132–134 days, macaques 146–186 days, gibbons 210 days, chimpanzees 230 days, gorillas 255 days, and humans (on the average) 267 days. Even small primates such as bush babies have gestations considerably longer than those of nonprimate mammals of equivalent size, a reflection of the increased complexity and differentiation of primate structure compared with that of nonprimates. Although in primates there is a general trend toward evolutionary increase in body size, there is no absolute correlation between body size and the duration of the gestation period. Marmosets, for example, are considerably smaller than spider monkeys and howler monkeys but have a slightly longer pregnancy (howler monkeys 139 days, “true” marmosets 130–150 days).

An extraordinary and somewhat inexplicable difference exists between the dimensions of the pelvic cavity and the dimensions of the head of the infant at birth in monkeys and humans on the one hand, and apes on the other. The head of the infant ape is considerably smaller than the pelvic cavity, so birth occurs easily and without prolonged labour. When the head of the infant monkey engages in the pelvis, the fit is exact, and labour may be a prolonged and difficult affair, as it is generally with humans. Human parturition, however, is generally a much more extended process than that of monkeys. Like the human infant, the monkey is born head first. Twin births are rare in most monkeys and apes, but marmosets and some lemurs and lorises habitually produce twins.

Infancy

The degrees of maturation and mother dependency at birth are obviously closely related phenomena. Newborn primate infants are neither as helpless as kittens, puppies, or rats nor as developed as newborn gazelles, horses, and other savanna-living animals. With a few exceptions, primate young are born with their eyes open and are fully furred. Exceptions are mouse lemurs (Microcebus), gentle lemurs (Hapalemur), and ruffed lemurs (Varecia), which bear more helpless (altricial) infants and carry their young in their mouth. Primate life being peripatetic, it is axiomatic that the infants must be able to cling to the mother’s fur; just a few species (again, mouse lemurs and ruffed lemurs and a few others) leave their infants in nests while foraging, and lorises “park” their young, leaving them hanging under branches in tangles of vegetation. The young of most higher primates have grasping hands and feet at birth and are able to cling to the maternal fur without assistance; only humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas need to support their newborn infants, and humans do so longest.

It seems likely that the difference between the African apes and humans in respect to postnatal grasping ability is related to the acquisition in man of bipedal walking. One of the anatomic correlates of the human gait is the loss of the grasping function of the big toe, which is aligned in parallel with the remaining digits. Such an arrangement precludes the use of the foot as a grasping extremity. The human infant—and to a lesser degree the gorilla infant—must depend largely on its grasping hands to support itself unaided. The fact that humans are habitually bipedal and that, consequently, the hands are freed from locomotor chores may also be a contributory factor; the human mother can move about and at the same time continue to support her infant. Selection for postnatal grasping, therefore, has not had the high survival value in humans that it has in nonhuman primates, in which the survival of the infant depends on its ability to hold on tightly. On the other hand, it is well known that newborn human infants can support their own weight, for short periods, by means of their grasping hands. Clearly then, adaptations for survival are not wholly lacking in the human species. Perhaps cultural factors have had the effect of suppressing natural selection for early infant grasping ability. The first factor may be the social evolution of a division of labour between the sexes and a fixed home base, which has allowed the mother to park her infant with other members of the family as babysitters. A second factor may be more peripatetic communities, in which the invention of infant-carrying devices, such as the papoose technique of North American Indians, has made it unnecessary for the infant to support itself. Whatever the biological or cultural reasons, the human infant is more helpless than the young of all other primates.

Once the primate infant has learned to support itself by standing on its own two (or four) feet, the physical phase of dependency is over; the next phase, psychological dependency, lasts much longer. The human child is metaphorically tied to its mother’s apron strings for much longer periods than are the nonhuman primates. The reasons for this are discussed below. According to Adolph Schultz, the Swiss anthropologist whose comparative anatomic studies have illuminated knowledge of nonhuman primates since the mid-20th century, the juvenile period of psychological maternal dependency is 21/2 years in lemurs, 6 years in monkeys, 7–8 years in most apes (though it now appears to be even longer than this in chimpanzees), and 14 years in humans.

Growth and longevity

The prolongation of postnatal life among primates affects all life periods, including infantile, juvenile, adult, and senescent. Although humans are the longest-lived members of the order, the potential life span of the chimpanzee has been estimated at 60 years, and orangutans occasionally achieve this in captivity. The life span of a lemur, on the other hand, is about 15 years and a monkey’s 25–30 years.

The characteristic growth spurts of human infants in weight and height also occur in nonhuman primates but start earlier in the postnatal period and are of shorter duration. Primates differ from most nonprimate mammals by virtue of a delayed puberty in both sexes until growth is nearly complete; in humans, the peak of the growth spurt in boys comes slightly after the sexual maturity, whereas in girls the growth spurt precedes menarche. There is some controversy over the very existence of an adolescent growth spurt in nonhuman primates. In some species, males are very much larger than females; this extra growth occurs long after sexual maturity and rather rapidly, so it is possibly equivalent to the human growth spurt. The most remarkable case of such postmature growth is seen in orangutans. A male can mature physically in his early teens, or he can spend as much as 20 years as a subadult and then suddenly, within a year, almost double his weight and develop the cheek flanges characteristic of full maturity. It appears that this is related to social conditions; in proximity to a full-grown, dominant male, a subadult male’s development will remain suppressed, and when the dominant male moves away (or, in a zoo, is removed from the vicinity), the subadult undergoes a flush of testosterone and matures rapidly.

Locomotion

Primate locomotion, being an aspect of behaviour that arises out of anatomic structure, shows much of the conservativeness and opportunism that generally characterizes the order. Primates with remarkably few changes in their skeletons and musculature have adopted a bewildering variety of locomotor patterns. The “natural” habitat of primates—in the historical sense—is the canopy of the forest. Although many primates have adopted the ground as their principal foraging area during the day, given the opportunity they will return to the trees to sleep at night. Trees provide cover from the climate and protection from predators; they are of course also a source of food. Only the gelada, the hamadryas baboon of the mountainous regions of Ethiopia, and the chacma baboon, which lives on the rocky coast of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, are ground sleepers; yet even these animals seek the protection of the cliffs and rocky precipices of their habitats at night. No primate sleeps totally unprotected; as a consequence of their relative immunity from predation, primates are heavy sleepers.

Four types of locomotion

The essential arboreality of primates has guaranteed the relative uniformity of the locomotor apparatus. Even humans, who have long since abandoned the trees as their principal lodging place, have only partially lost the physical adaptations for tree climbing; their hands, in particular, remain in the arboreal mold. Only the feet have lost their primitive prehensility in adapting to bipedal walking. Primate locomotion can be classified on behavioral grounds into four major types: vertical clinging and leaping, quadrupedalism, brachiation, and bipedalism. Within these major categories, there are a number of subtypes, and within these subtypes, there are an infinite number of variations between species and, by virtue of individual variability, within species. The differences between the four major categories lie principally in the degree to which the forelimbs and hind limbs are used to climb, swing, jump, and run.

Vertical clinging and leaping, for instance, is primarily a function of the hind limbs, as is bipedalism, whereas brachiation is performed exclusively with the forelimbs. Quadrupedalism involves both forelimbs and hind limbs, of course, although not to an equal extent. Some quadrupeds are hind limb-dominated; in others, the forelimb and the hind limb are equally important. The hind limb-dominated primates, such as the langurs and colobus monkeys, employ a large element of leaping in their movements, a less-notable feature of the more generalized quadrupeds such as guenons. The quadrupedal category is inevitably somewhat of a grab bag, and the gaits included in it have not yet been studied critically. One subtype, here designated as slow climbing, differs profoundly from the other subtypes of the category, being somewhat ponderous and devoid of elements of leaping or jumping. The species in this category are lorises and pottos, all of which are arboreal and nocturnal.

As many authorities who have studied locomotion in free-ranging primate species have pointed out, the classifications of locomotion into categories is a somewhat artificial procedure. A chimpanzee shows a variety of different gaits according to the circumstances of the environment: quadrupedalism (knuckle walking), climbing, bipedalism, and brachiation. This holds true also for the langurs and colobus monkeys, which are designated semibrachiators, which means that they mainly move quadrupedally (usually with a “galloping gait” rather than walking) but also jump across gaps and occasionally swing by their arms. Although the categories are phrased in behavioral terms, their implications are also anatomic. Brachiation is the mode of locomotion for which the animal is specifically adapted; the anatomic correlates of brachiation are quite unmistakable and can be determined in fossil bones as much as in living animals. In some instances, it may well be that a particular anatomy is misleading. It has been argued that the anatomy of the great apes (including humans), for instance, is that of a brachiator, yet in fact they seldom brachiate (humans rarely and adult gorillas probably never). Watching gorillas, in particular, suggests that what appeared at first to be a locomotor adaptation may actually be a feeding one; the gorilla sits erect amid its food, reaching all around it to pull it in, and thereby saves an enormous amount of energy. The shortened lumbar spine (giving a lowered centre of gravity), broad chest, enhanced mobility of the shoulder joint, and flexible wrist may be related to this feeding style. The gibbons’ specializations for brachiation may be derived from these same traits, rather than the other way about.

Changes in climate and geography during the evolutionary history of primates may also have led to structural atavisms in the anatomy of living primates. Many chimpanzees now living in woodland-savanna conditions in Africa, where the trees are widely spaced and generally unsuitable for the classic climbing style of forest-living chimpanzees, have adopted a largely ground-living life. Gorillas and chimpanzees are first and foremost knuckle walkers, but, given an environment like that of a zoo with a cage specially designed with lots of overhead bars and ropes, they will brachiate fairly frequently.

When the subject of primate arboreal locomotion is studied in evolutionary terms by using fossils, it becomes clear that locomotor categories are not discrete but constitute a continuum of change from a hind limb-dominated gait to a forelimb-dominated one. The best single indicator of gait, one that has the added advantage of being strictly quantitative, is the intermembral index. Briefly, the index is a ratio expressed as percentage of arm length to leg length; an index over 100 indicates relatively long arms. This provides a model by means of which the locomotion of an early primate can be inferred by determination of the intermembral index of the fossil skeleton. Animals do not necessarily fall discretely into categories. Species with indexes lying between those of clearly recognizable locomotor types represent transitional types, whose style of locomotion really does manifest features of both of the bracketing categories. Some lemurs have indexes that fall between 65 and 75, and their gait is a combination of vertical clinging and quadrupedalism. The South American spider monkeys (genus Ateles), whose index lies between 100 and 108, show a type of locomotion that contains the elements of both quadrupedalism and brachiation.

When the intermembral index is applied to fossil primates, it appears that the earliest primates living in the Eocene Epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago) must have moved about somewhat in the manner of modern vertical clingers and leapers. Quadrupedal gaits were well established during the Miocene Epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago) when the two major environmental types of quadrupedal gait— terrestrial and the arboreal—were established, with indexes in the region of 85–100 and 75–85, respectively. Brachiation, associated with a high intermembral index, was established as a way of arboreal life at the end of the Miocene, with the small hominid Oreopithecus from Italy. There is direct evidence of bipedalism’s extending back four million years, and certain indirect evidence (see below Evolution and paleontology) suggests that bipedalism might have evolved in a modified form up to a million years before that.

Bipedalism

Some degree of bipedal ability, of course, is a basic possession of the order Primates. All primates sit upright. Many stand upright without supporting their body weight by their arms, and some, especially the apes, actually walk upright for short periods. The view that the possession of uprightness is a solely human attribute is untenable; humans are merely the one species of the order that has exploited the potential of this ancestry to its extreme.

Chimpanzees, gorillas and gibbons, macaques, spider monkeys, capuchins, and others are all frequent bipedal walkers. To define humans categorically as “bipedal” is not enough; to describe them as habitually bipedal is nearer the truth, but habit as such does not leave its mark on fossil bones. Some more precise definition is needed. The human walk has been described as striding, a mode of locomotion defining a special pattern of behaviour and a special morphology. Striding, in a sense, is the quintessence of bipedalism; it is a means of traveling during which the energy output of the body is reduced to a physiological minimum by the smooth, undulating flow of the progression. It is a complex activity involving the joints and muscles of the whole body, and it is likely that the evolution of the human gait took place gradually over a period of 10 million years or so.

The pattern of locomotion of human ancestors immediately preceding the acquisition of bipedalism has long been a matter of controversy, and the question has not yet been resolved. The evidence derived from anatomic, physiological, and biochemical studies for the close affinity of chimpanzees and humans, and the slightly less close affinity of gorillas, would suggest that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestry. There have been claims that the wrist anatomy of australopithecines shows remnant knuckle-walking adaptations. The issue is still hotly debated, and some authorities continue to support a brachiation model for the ancestry of all the apes. Other authorities have proposed other solutions: semibrachiation, for example, and even a form of locomotion similar to that of tarsiers and other clingers and leapers. At the present time, there is insufficient information to elucidate the phylogeny of man’s bipedal gait, except that it can be assumed to have involved a large measure of truncal uprightness.

Diet

The diet of primates is a factor of their ecology that, during their evolution, has clearly played an important role in their dispersion and adaptive radiation as well as in the development of the teeth, jaws, and digestive system. Diet is also closely related to locomotor pattern and to body size.

The principal food substances taken by primates may be divided into vegetable (fruits, flowers, leaves, nuts, barks, pith, seeds, grasses, stems, roots, and tubers) and animal (birds, birds’ eggs, lizards, small rodents and bats, insects, frogs, and crustacea). The flesh of larger mammals (including primates) is not listed as an important item of nonhuman primate diet, with the sole exception of chimpanzees—it is taken by baboons in special circumstances that are not yet fully understood.

While diet is selective and specific to the order in many mammalian groups, among primates it is difficult to establish any hard and fast rules. Although there are decided preferences for certain food items, catholicity is more characteristic than specificity. Generally speaking, primates are omnivorous, as the physiology of their digestive system attests. Relatively few examples of dietary specialization are to be found. The so-called leaf-eating monkeys, a sobriquet that embraces the whole of the subfamily Colobinae, including colobus monkeys and langurs, are by no means exclusively leaf eaters and according to season include flowers, fruit, and (in some cases) seeds in their diet. The howler monkeys of the New World have a similar dietary preference.

Broadly, however, certain overall dietary preferences are discernible. The leaf-eating langurs have already been mentioned. The apes (other than the mountain gorilla) are substantially fruit eaters. Many of the smaller nocturnal primitive species such as galagos, dwarf lemurs, sportive lemurs, the aye-aye, and the slender loris are substantially insectivorous; the tarsier is probably the only primate that is exclusively carnivorous, feeding on insects, lizards, and snakes. The larger diurnal lemurs (e.g., typical lemurs, the sifaka, and the indri) are more vegetarian, including fruit, seeds, and leaves. It seems apparent that size, rather than activity rhythm, governs the nature of the primate diet. The small marmosets of the South American genus Callithrix have exclusively diurnal rhythms and are insectivorous and also eat gums, while the slightly larger, but equally diurnal, tamarins (genus Saguinus) are more omnivorous. An approximate cutoff point of 500 grams (Kay’s threshold, after the primatologist Richard Kay, who first drew attention to it) has been proposed as an upper limit for species subsisting mainly on insects and a lower limit for those relying on leaves. The reason is that insects are small and hard to catch, and a large animal simply would not be able to catch enough to sustain it during its waking hours. The cellulose and hemicellulose components of leaves, on the other hand, require complex digestive processes, and a small animal would be unable to maintain a constant throughput. Fruit, as a dietary component, suffers from neither of these constraints.

Size in evolutionary perspective

In evolutionary terms, increase in size has probably played a large part in determining the direction of primate evolution. Early primates of about 50 million years ago were small forest-living creatures whose molar teeth bore high, pointed cusps but were neither as tall nor as pointed as those of their insectivore-like ancestors, whose molars were ideally adapted for cracking the hard chitinous exoskeletons of insects. This fact suggests that the reduction of the molar cusps was associated with the adoption of a fruit-eating habit. Although this has some validity as a generalization, it should not be taken too literally, as most primates include some insects in their diet and of course there are many almost exclusively insectivorous forms, which have nonetheless reduced the height and acuity of their molar cusps. Increasing body size, a trend that is clearly apparent throughout primate evolution, would have been associated with the adoption of supplementary sources of food. An increase in size and the gradual addition of bulk foods to the diet would in turn have affected the habitat and the pattern of locomotion of primates. Suitable adaptations in this case would have been the facility to climb, leap, and balance in trees.

It is noteworthy that, during evolution, the development of a prehensile foot preceded that of a prehensile hand. Vertical-clinging primates such as the tarsiers or small, squirrel-like quadrupeds such as the marmosets—all of which have prehensile feet but not completely prehensile hands—by remaining or becoming small, have avoided the evolutionary pressures that have impinged on larger primates. A large arboreal primate without entirely prehensile hands is at a considerable disadvantage in moving about in the canopy of trees, but a small one suffers little disadvantage. Amid the large and firm branches, size is no particular hazard, but at the periphery of the crown, where the fruit is most abundant and the branches are slender and flexible, the risk of falling is increased. It is therefore likely that the combination of an increase in body size associated with the inevitable shift toward a bulk diet led first to the evolution of a grasping hand, then to the appearance of a prehensile hand, and finally to an opposable thumb. Four prehensile extremities are obviously more effective than two in defying gravity.

Such adaptations of the forelimbs would have had the effect of equalizing the role of the limbs. The limbs of vertical clingers are functionally disparate, the lower pair being dominantly propulsive and the upper secondary and purely supportive. The limbs of quadrupeds, however, are more homogeneous, both pairs having a propulsive function during running. Thus, it would seem that the transition in locomotor grade between vertical clinging and leaping and quadrupedalism came about as an adaptation to increased body size. Size, diet, ecology, locomotion, and anatomic structure provide a constellation of causes and effects that are critical factors in the evolution of the primates.

Forest and savanna

The chief physiognomic features of rainforests, the ancestral home of the order Primates and the principal habitat of nonhuman primates today, are the evergreen broad-leaved trees that collectively form a closed canopy, so opaque to sunlight that the forest floor is in perpetual twilight. Epiphytes and thick-stemmed lianas drape the trees, linking one crown to another and providing aerial pathways for monkeys to pass from tree to tree through a continuum of interlacing branches, a three-dimensional maze that provides home, restaurant, shopping districts, and highways for primates. Three strata of rainforests are broadly distinguishable: an understory, a middle story, and an upper story. The understory, consisting of shrubs and saplings, is often “closed,” the crowns of the constituent trees overlapping one another to form a dense continuous horizontal layer. The middle story is characterized by trees that are in lateral contact but do not overlap; the highest story, by tall trees, some 50 metres (about 165 feet) or more, that form a discontinuous layer of umbrella-shaped crowns. The occasional “emergent” forest giant may tower above the highest layer of the canopy. There is some evidence, much of it conflicting, that some zonation of forest primates occurs within the forest canopy. The stratification of forest is extremely variable; the number of layers tends to diminish from three to two in secondary forest, dry deciduous forest, and montane forest and from two to one as temperate zone, tropical woodland, or montane woodland supervenes.

Tropical grasslands, or savannas, are also the homes of primates in Africa and Asia; no savanna-living primates exist in South America. Tropical grasslands comprise a mixture of trees and grasses, the proportion of trees to grass varying directly with the rainfall. Areas of high seasonal rainfall support single-story woodlands of tall trees, while lush grasses form the ground vegetation; but, where rainfall is both seasonal and low, the trees consist of stubby xerophilous (dry-loving) shrubs and short, tussocky grasses. The principal primates of the savanna are the ground-living species: in Africa, the vervets, baboons, and patas monkey; and in Asia, the macaques and the Hanumān langur.

Tropical montane forests or tropical rainforests at high altitude also abound in primates in Africa, Asia, and South America. In equatorial Africa, certain primate species have colonized the montane-savanna regions, or moorlands, where the rugged mountainous terrain and seasonal food scarcity support herds of geladas and hamadryas baboons. These high mountaineers of Africa have no ecological counterparts in Asia or South America.

Additional Information

Primates are an order of mammals. It includes all lemurs, monkeys and apes, including humans. Most primates (but not humans) are mainly or entirely forest dwellers.

There are about 400 species of primates. All primates are similar to humans in many ways, but language is an important advantage which only humans have. Other primates have a pattern of calls and gestures, but not language as we know it.

Primates have hands with five fingers and flat fingernails (most other animals have claws or hooves). All primates are covered with fur (hair), but in humans the body hair is only noticeable in two places: on the head and around the genitals.

Primates are split into two groups: Strepsirrhini and Haplorhini. Haplorrhini includes larger monkeys such as, tarsiers and apes including humans. Strepsirrhini includes smaller monkeys such as lemurs, lorises, galagos (also called bush babies) and the aye-aye.

Primates are one of the few mammal groups which re-evolved full color vision. Even so, color vision in birds is better. Color vision was lost in mammals during the long period when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and mammals were mainly small nocturnal animals.

Close contact between humans and non-human primates creates opportunities for zoonotic diseases to get to humans. Virus diseases transmitted to humans include herpes, measles, ebola, rabies, and hepatitis.