Primates

Etymology and Definition

✣ History of terminology
✣ Classification of living primates

Primates Adaptation

✣ Arboreal adaptations
✣ Dietary plasticity
✣ Parental investment

Supplemental Materials

✣ Various cited images, videos, and quizzes as supplemental material for learning. 

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Etymology and Definition

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A primate is any member that belongs to the biological order Primates that is within class Mammalia—that comprises of some of the most intelligent species such as us, humans, apes, and prosimians.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first known use of the term “primates” can be traced back to the 13th century—it was derived from the French word primat that means prime or first rank. For this reason, Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist, used this term to classify the biological order Primates and identify it as the highest rank among all animals.

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On the other hand, Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, a well-known primatologist and paleoanthropologist, classified primates according to their behavioral, adaptive, and evolutionary tendencies:
(1) Primates exhibits arboreal adaptations;
(2) Primates express dietary plasticity; and
(3) Primates express parental investment.

Did you know?

As stated by the All the World's Primates, the order Primates has over 505 species and 195 subspecies recognized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—acknowledging it as the third most diverse order of mammals.

Primates Adaptation

Arboreal Adaptations

Primates exhibit arboreal adaptations—where their set of behaviors, physical, and anatomical characteristics has evolved due to their adaptation in the life in the trees: 

Versatile skeletal structure

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Primates have versatile skeletal structure due to the separation of bones in the articular joints in shoulders (clavicle), limbs (ulna and radius), and hands and feet (phalanges) that allow them to be mobile and flexible.

Also, the hands of primates have the capability to perform power and precision grip due to the presence of the opposable thumb. Primates that use their hands for locomotion tend to perform power grip in which the fingers and thumb grasp around and firmly holds an object while primates such as humans that rarely use their hands for locomotion developed the ability to perform precision grip that enhances finger dexterity. Many primates except humans continue to have opposable hallux (big toe) to enable their feet to also grasp tree branches.

Enhanced sense of touch

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Primates have an enhanced sense of touch—they have dermal ridges at the ends of the fingers and toes and some primates have flat fingernails that play a crucial role in the increased amount of friction that allows them to grip much better and avoid slipping when grasping an object. Primates combination of having epidermal ridges and low-flow sweat glands—that provides friction and moisture balance—enables them to have an evolutionary advantage in grasping in a wet or dry environment.

Enhanced sense of vision

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Primates have an enhanced sense of vision—the convergence of eyes and color vision allows them to easily locate their prey or foods in their environment. Previous discoveries have also proved that catarrhine primates have the capability to distinguish red-green colors (trichromatic color vision) which cannot be commonly found in other mammals, gives them the advantage in determining whether their food is ripe or not.

Reduced reliance on smell and hearing

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Primates have reduced reliance on smell and hearing due to the loss of the rhinarium and the long snout. Also, the deterioration of the olfactory receptor genes in primates is due to their enhanced sense of vision. Among the few primates that have retained the rhinarium are the lemurs.

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Dietary Plasticity 

Primates express dietary plasticity where they are able to eat a wide variety of foods and have a highly flexible diet. This adaptation can be observed from their generalized dental pattern that includes the four functionally distinctive tooth types such as the incisors, canines, premolars, and molars that have various functions in processing various foods.

Primates dental formula, the number and types of teeth in a quadrant varies from one species to another—the early mammalian ancestor of primates had 3/1/4/3 dental pattern, the anthropoids have 2/1/2/3 dental pattern, and most New World primates have 2/1/3/3 dental pattern. On the other hand, strepsirrhines developed a tooth comb—long, slender, procumbent incisors and canines that are specially used for scraping and grooming fur.

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Parental Investment 


Primates express parental investment where parent primates invest a lot of time and care in their offspring. Primates are iteroparous—can have several reproductive periods throughout their lifetime but can only produce few individuals. Parent primates provide their time and energy in caring, teaching, and transmitting various knowledge to their offspring that causes them to have a long interval of pregnancy. Due to the longer growth and development period of primates, they tend to have greater behavioral complexity and a bigger brain, providing a high level of intelligence for some primates—that can also be advantageous as it can increase the primates' chance of survival.

Supplemental Materials

Videos

Here are some of my recommended Youtube videos regarding primates!

Go Ape - The Fascinating World of Primates | Wildlife Documentary by Free Documentary - Nature

Primate Taxonomy Lesson by MonkeyWorldOfficial

Primates: What is a Primate? by Odyssey Earth

Primate Classification by Kristin Liv Rauch

Primate Quiz

Test your knowledge and take the challenging quizzes about the biological order Primates! 
Take the primates quiz by DK Find out!

Try 10 questions to test your knowledge of our closest relatives in the animal world with the primates quiz challenge.

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Primates: Fact or Fiction? by Britannica

What is the rarest monkey? How many kinds of gibbons are there? Test your knowledge of the order of mammals that includes humans by taking this primates quiz.

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How good is your primate knowledge? by Discover Wildlife

Find out how much you know about the extraordinary group of animals to which we belong. 

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ANTHRO 104 (X1): Human Evolution

In fulfillment of the requirements for the course ANTHRO 104 under Prof. Kevin Chavez Laxamana. 

Discussions
  • Primates: Etymology and Definition
  • Primates Adaptations
  • Supplemental Materials
Author
  • Ashley Claire A. Genabe

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