Week 7: Primate Classification

What is a primate? What characteristics define primates from their closest living relatives?

Primates are adapted to life in the trees—they express arboreal adaptation in a set of behaviors and anatomical characteristics that is unique among mammals.
- versatile skeletion
- opposable thumbs
- enhanced touch
- flat fingernails not claws

Primates eat a wide variety of foods—they express dietary plasticity.
- enhanced vision
- reduced smell
- dietary adaptations found in the teeth: multiple teeth types and reduced number of teeth

Primates invest a lot of time and care in few offspring—they express parental investment.
- one child at a time sometimes twins
- long birth intervals
- long and extensive preadult care

Apes have no tail

Types of teeth

Incisors
Canines
Premolars
Molars

Tarsier dentition

U: 2133
L: 1133

lemur and lorises dentition

U&L: 2133

old world monkey and ape dentition

U&L: 2123

new world monkey dentition

U&L: 2132 or 2133

Strepsirhines versus Haplorhines

Strep: galagos, pottos, infraorders: lemuriformes, lorisiformes, adapiformes
- suborder of primates
- lower primates
- wet naked nosed primates with highly developed smell
- longer snouts
- lower incisors form tooth comb
- no plate between orbit and temporal fossa
- less forward facing eyes
- produce own VitC
- smaller brain
- mainly arboreal

Hap: new and old world monkeys and apes, infraorders: tarsiiformes and simiiformes
- second suborder
- higher primates
- dry furry noses
- shorter faces
- highly developed vision with forward facing eyes
- plate separating orbit from temporal fossa
- large brains
- arboreal or terrestrial

Catarrhines

Old world monkeys and apes

Platyrrhines

new world monkeys

Catarrhines vs Platyrrhines

OLD WORLD catarrhine:

• meaning 'narrow, turned-down nose,'

• have four upper and four lower premolars.
  
  NEW WORLD platyrrhine:

• meaning 'flat nose,' refers to the flattened muzzle with broadly spaced, laterally flared nares

• six upper and six lower premolars

Lesser apes

Siamangs and Gibbons

Great apes

Chimps
Gorillas
Bonobos
Orangutans
HUMANS

lesser apes vs greater apes

hylobatids, or lesser apes

• gibbons and siamangs

• form pair bonds, in which one male, one female, and their offspring are the basic social unit

• Southeast asia

• regularly practice brachiation

nonhuman hominids, or great apes

• gorilla chimp bonobo orangutans

• variety of social groupings

• africa except the orangutan which lives in asia

• suspensory locomotion