Transcript Primates - OpotikiCollegeBiology

Primates
• Share a Common Ancestor ,
• prosimians, monkeys, apes, humans.
Relevant Lifestyle features
• Colour Vision
• Grasping hands
• Forward facing eyes.
• Dependent infants.
• Social groups.
• Large cranial capacity in relation to body size.
Prosimian
Exhibit some features similar to early
ancestor.
But have specialised to their own selection
pressures so not the same as the early
ancestor.
Loris,bush baby, lemur
• Use scent to
communicate
• Tail for balance.
Monkeys and Apes.
New World Monkeys
• have developed a prehensile tail.
• All live in trees (arboreal).
• Need colour vision and vocalisation to
communicate.
• Facial features important.
• Range of locomotion styles.
Golden Lion Tamarin
Old World Monkeys
• Live in the Old World (Africa and Asia)
• Terrestrial and arboreal dwelling.
• No prehensile tails.
Still need
• Colour vision and vocalisation to communicate.
• Facial features important.
• Range of locomotion styles.
Apes
• Live in Asia and Africa.
• No tails.
• Vocalisation.
• Locomotion styles significant.
• Brachiation, knuckle walking,
quadrapedalism, bipedalism.
Orangutan,
Bonobo,
Gorilla,
Chimp
• Locomotion?
• Tool user – solves problems.
Locomotion?
Problem solving?
Locomotion?
Communication
Hominins
• Humans and Human ancestors.
• Bipedal
• Large cranial capacity with respect to body
size.
• Opposable thumb
• Other primate features.
Relevant Lifestyle features
• Colour Vision because
• Grasping hands developed to extreme in
• Forward facing eyes because
• Large cranial capacity (in relation to body size)
because
• Dependent infants – cultural evolution
• Social groups – cultural evolution
Primates are a Mammalian group
Characterised by
• adaptations for climbing trees although many
different types of locomotion
• Primates are characterized by their large brains,
relative to other mammals,
• an increased reliance on stereoscopic vision at
the expense of smell, the dominant sensory
system in most mammals.
• most also have opposable thumbs and some
have prehensile tails.
• Many species are sexually dimorphic, which
means males and females have different
physical traits, including body mass, canine
tooth size, and coloration.
• Primates have slower rates of development than
other similarly sized mammals, and reach
maturity later but have longer lifespans.
• Some species live in solitude, others live in
male–female pairs, and others live in groups of
up to hundreds of members.