Chapter 6: The Primates
Dividing Mammals Metatheria: mammals that reproduce without a placenta, including the marsupials. Prototheira: mammals that reproduce by egg-laying, then nurse you from nipples. The Australian platypus and echidna are the only living monotremes. Eutheria: mammals that reproduce with a placenta and uterus.
What is a primate? Primates are mammals with grasping hands, large brains, a high degree learned rather than innate behavior, and a suite of other traits.
Dividing Primates Strepsirhine (Strepsirhini): suborder of the order Primates that includes the prosimians, excluding the tarsier. Haplorhine (Haplorhini): suborder of the order Primates that includes the anthropoids and the tarsier. Prosimian: member of the primate suborder prosimii that includes the lemurs, lorises, galagos, and tarsiers. Anthropoid: members of the primate suborder Anthropoidea that includes the monkeys, apes, and hominins.
Primate Movement
More traits Grasping hands with opposable thumbs and big toes Flattened nails Forward facing eyes with stereoscopic vision Arboreal hypothesis: hypothesis for the origin of primate adaptation that focuses on the value of grasping hands and stereoscopic vision for life in the trees. Visual predation hypothesis: hypothesis for the origin of primate adaptation that focuses on the value of grasping hands and stereoscopic vision for catching small prey.
Dental Arcade 2:1:2:3 2:1:3:3
More traits Boney Eye Orbits Petrosal Bulla
Behavioral traits Nocturnal: active at night. Diurnal: active during the daylight hours. Sociality: group living, a fundamental trait of haplorhine primates.
Life history traits Single offspring Large brains Extended ontogeny Neocortex: the part of the brain that controls higher cognitive function; the cerebrum Extended ontogeny Ontogeny: the life cycle of an organism from conception to birth.
Strepsirhines and Haplorhines Lemurs, lorises, galagos Reliance on olfaction Nocturnal Lack of complex social behavior Tooth comb Tarsier, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes and hominins
New World Monkeys Playtyrrhini: infraorder of the order Primates that is synonymous with the New World monkeys or ceboids. Prehensile tail: grasping tail possessed by some species of the primate families Cebidae and Atelidae.
Old World Catarrhini: infraorder of the order Primates that includes the Old World monkeys, apes, and hominins.
The Hominoids Hominin (Homininae): member of our own human family, past or present. Hylobatid (Hylobatidae): member of the gibbon, or lesser ape, family. Pongid (Pongidae): one of the four great apes species: gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo, or orangutan. Brachiation: mode of arm-hanging and arm-swinging that uses a rotating shoulder to suspend the body of an ape or hominin beneath the branch or to travel between branches.
Primate Ecology
Diet Frugivorous: an animal that eats a diet composed mainly of fruit. Folivores: animals who eat a diet composed mainly of leaves, or foliage. Activity budget: the pattern of waling, eating, moving, socializing, and sleeping that all nonhuman primates engage in each day. Difference between lowland and highland gorillas?
Territories and Ranges Home range: the spatial area used by a primate group. Core area: the part of a home range that is most intensively used. Territory: the part of a home range that is defended against other members of the same species.
Primate Communities