Bio Anthro Chapter 6

Flashcards covering primate characteristics, adaptations, and classifications based on lecture notes.

Arboreal adaptations

Adaptations to life in the trees, including grasping hands and feet, opposable thumbs and toes, long digits, front facing eyes, depth perception

Dietary plasticity

The ability to eat a wide variety of foods.

Parental investment

Investing significant time and care in a small number of offspring.

Generalized skeletal structure

Highly mobile articulations in shoulders, limbs, hands, and feet.

Opposable thumb

The tip of the thumb can touch the tips of other fingers for grasping.

Enhanced touch

Sensitivity due to dermal ridges (fingerprints) for better gripping.

Enhanced vision

Increased depth perception and color vision due to this.

Reduced smell

Smaller snouts indicate a decreased reliance on this sense.

2/1/2/3 dental formula

Dental formula common in Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.

Bilophodont

Two-ridged tooth in lower molars of Old World monkeys.

Y-5 molar

Y-shaped grooves in hominoids’ lower molar cusps.

Tooth comb

Anterior teeth tilted forward, creating a scraper.

Canine-premolar honing complex

Upper canines sharpened against lower third premolars.

Sectorial

Lower third premolar adapted for cutting.

Strepsirrhini

Lemurs, lorises, and galagos.

Rhinarium

Wet, V-shaped nose.

Lemurs communication

Communicate with distinctive calls and mark territory with urine.

Lemurs

Highly anatomical diversity, groups are female dominated.

Lorises habitat

Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and Africa.

Galagos habitat

Africa

Galagos Diet and Locomotion

Insectivorous, powerful hind limbs for leaping.

Haplorrhini

Have lost primitive characteristics, larger brains

Anthropoids

Catarrhines and platyrrhines

Catarrhines

Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.

Platyrrhines

New World monkeys.

Catarrhines Nose

Nostrils close together and point downward.

Platyrrhines Nose

Round nostrils separated by a wide nasal septum.

Cercopithecoids

Old World monkeys; arboreal and terrestrial, nonprehensile tail

Sexual dimorphism

Male canines bigger than females’

Platyrrhines

Superfamily of ceboids

Prehensile tail

Acts as a kind of hand for support in trees

Arboreal

Supersensory locomotion

Tarsiers habitat

Restricted to a series of islands (Sulawesi, Borneo, the Philippines)

Locomotion of Apes vs Monkeys

Apes more upright, monkeys more arboreal

Hominoids

Humans, great and lesser apes

Hominoids vs Humans Habitat

Humans live on every continent whereas lesser apes live in Southeast Asia

Brachiators

Use upper limbs to move arboreally (arm-swinging; gibbons and siamangs)

Quadrupedalism

Knuckle-walking (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas)

Bipedal Adaptations

Foramen magnum is located at the bottom of the skull and the skull sits atop the body

Human Pelvises

Human pelvises are short and directed to the side of the body (broader)