Understanding primates
What is a primate?
Mammal – have hair, nurse young, warm blooded, and relatively large brains.
Biography:
Activity cycles:
Diet: Primates tend to seek foods rich in protein and carbs.
Proteins are essential for growth and basic body functions
Carbs area ready source of energy
Main sources of proteins include:
Leaves (Folivore)
Bugs (Insectivore)
Seeds (gramnivore)
Vertebrates (faunivore)
Main sources of carbs include:
Fruit (frugivore)
Gum (gumnivore)
Nectar
Gum and Seeds are hard to digest
Most of the primates are omnivorous but might concentrate on certain foods and have adaptations for eating those foods.
Adaptations for folivory:
Molars have cuspss that are high/large and connecting the cusps is rigid enamel. The teeth come together and act like siccors to cut the leaves for digestion.
Can have more complex/multichambered stomachs.
Colobus monkeys have complex stomach like cows
Adaptations for frugivory:
Low rounded cusps
Mortal and pestal like more crushing.
Broad incisors
Larger relative brain size for remembering where food is.
Adaptations for insectivory
Fairly sharp cusps to pierce exoskeleton
Adaptations for gummivory
Usually have claws to cling onto trunk and branches pf trees
Evolved from nails to claws
Have incisors that stick out (procumbent incisors)
LOCOMOTION
(Limbs short and flexed!)
(Limbs longer and less flexed) (KNUCKLE WALKING IN APES) Locomotion’s cont.:
Leaping (including vertical clinging and leaping
Suspensory (including brachiation)
Gibbons is a suspensory primate. (brachiation is arm over arm like on monkey bars)
SOCIAL SYSTEMS
Grouping patterns and mating systems
Why live in groups?
Predator protection- more eyes and ears – dilution effect
More opportunities for mating
Help finding food and defend those food resources
Chances of detecting a predator is higher
Protection from infanticide: males who kill other males’