primate

—primatal, adj., n. —primatial /pruy may"sheuhl/, primatical /pruy mat"i keuhl/, adj.

/pruy"mayt/ or, esp. for 1, /pruy"mit/, n.

1. Eccles. an archbishop or bishop ranking first among the bishops of a province or country.

2. any of various omnivorous mammals of the order Primates, comprising the three suborders Anthropoidea (humans, great apes, gibbons, Old World monkeys, and New World monkeys), Prosimii (lemurs, loris, and their allies), and Tarsioidea (tarsiers), esp. distinguished by the use of hands, varied locomotion, and by complex flexible behavior involving a high level of social interaction and cultural adaptability.

3. Archaic. a chief or leader.

[1175-1225; ME primat dignitary, religious leader < LL primat- (s. of primas), n. use of L primas of first rank, deriv. of primus first (see PRIME); (def. 2) taken as sing. of NL Primates PRIMATES, as if ending in -ATE¹]

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any of more than 300 species of monkeys, apes, and other mammals of the order Primates.

Primates are distinguished from other mammals by one or more of the following traits: unspecialized structure, specialized behaviour, short muzzle, comparatively poor sense of smell, prehensile five-digit hands and feet possessing flat nails instead of claws, acute vision with depth perception due to forward-facing eyes, large brain, and prolonged pre-and postnatal development. Most species bear a single young and live in troops headed by a male. The prosimians include eight families: lemurs (families Lemuridae, Indriidae, Cheirogaleidae, and Megaladapidae), the aye-aye (Daubentoniidae), galagos (Galagonidae), lorises (Loridae), and tarsiers (Tarsiidae). The anthropoids (a group called the Catarrhini) include nine families: New World monkeys (families Callitrichidae, Cebidae, Aotidae, Atelidae, and Pitheciidae), Old World monkeys (Cercopithecidae), the lesser apes (Hylobatidae), the great apes (Pongidae), and humans (Hominidae). The great apes are sometimes classified with humans in Hominidae. Although the first primates may have originated as early as 90 million years ago, the oldest known fossil remains are about 55 million years old.

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▪ ecclesiastical office

      in Christianity, an ecclesiastical title for a bishop in some churches who has precedence over a number of other bishops. In the early church, it was one of several titles, including metropolitan, exarch, and patriarch, used to designate a chief bishop who had certain rights of superintendence over an entire district or area. Through gradual development it became primarily an honorary office.

      In the modern Roman Catholic church (Roman Catholicism), primates are those metropolitan archbishops whose sees, by reason of antiquity or prominence, are the primary sees of a region or nation. Apart from the special case of the pope, who has among his titles that of primate of Italy, primates generally do not possess any jurisdiction outside their own dioceses, but only a limited and honorary right to precedence.

      In the Church of England (England, Church of), the archbishop of York is primate of England, whereas the archbishop of Canterbury is primate of the entire Anglican Communion.

▪ mammal

Introduction

   in zoology, any mammal group that includes the lemurs (lemur), lorises (loris), tarsiers (tarsier), monkeys (monkey), apes (ape), and humans (human being). The order Primates, with its 300 or more species, is the third most diverse order of mammals, after rodents (rodent) (Rodentia) and bats (bat) (Chiroptera). Although there are some notable variations between some primate groups, they share several anatomic and functional characteristics reflective of their common ancestry. When compared with body weight, the primate brain is larger than that of other terrestrial mammals, and it has a fissure unique to primates (the Calcarine sulcus) that separates the first and second visual areas on each side of the brain. Whereas all other mammals have claws or hooves on their digits, only primates have flat nails. Some primates do have claws, but even among these there is a flat nail on the big toe (hallux). In all primates except humans, the hallux diverges from the other toes and together with them forms a pincer capable of grasping objects such as branches. Not all primates have similarly dextrous hands; only the catarrhines (Old World monkeys, apes, and humans) and a few of the lemurs and lorises have an opposable thumb. Primates are not alone in having grasping feet, but as these occur in many other arboreal mammals (e.g., squirrels and opossums), and as most present-day primates are arboreal, this characteristic suggests that they evolved from an ancestor that was arboreal. So too does primates' possession of specialized nerve endings (Meissner's corpuscles) in the hands and feet that increase tactile sensitivity. As far as is known, no other placental mammal has them. Primates possess dermatoglyphics (the skin ridges responsible for fingerprints), but so do many other arboreal mammals. The eyes face forward in all primates so that the eyes' visual fields overlap. Again, this feature is not by any means restricted to primates, but it is a general feature seen among predators. It has been proposed, therefore, that the ancestor of the primates was a predator, perhaps insectivorous. The optic fibres in almost all mammals cross over (decussate) so that signals from one eye are interpreted on the opposite side of the brain, but, in some primate species, up to 40 percent of the nerve fibres do not cross over. Primate teeth are distinguishable from those of other mammals by the low, rounded form of the molar and premolar cusps, which contrast with the high, pointed cusps or elaborate ridges of other placental mammals. This distinction makes fossilized primate teeth easy to recognize. Fossils of the earliest primates date to the Early Eocene Epoch (54.8 million to 49 million years ago) or perhaps to the Late Paleocene Epoch (57.9 million to 54.8 million years ago). Though they began as an arboreal group, and many (especially the platyrrhines, or New World monkeys) have remained thoroughly arboreal, many have become at least partly terrestrial, and many have achieved high levels of intelligence. It is certainly no accident that the most intelligent of all forms of life, the only one capable of constructing the Encyclopædia Britannica, belongs to this order.

General considerations

Size range and adaptive diversity

 Members of the order Primates show a remarkable range of size and adaptive diversity. The smallest primate is Madame Berthe's mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae) of Madagascar, which weighs some 35 grams (one ounce); the most massive is certainly the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), whose weight may be more than 4,000 times as great, varying from 140 to 180 kg (about 300 to 400 pounds).

 Primates occupy two major vegetational zones: tropical forest (tropical rainforest) and woodland–grassland vegetational complexes. Each of these zones has produced in its resident primates the appropriate adaptations, but there is perhaps more diversity of bodily form among forest-living species than among savanna inhabitants. One of the explanations of this difference is that it is the precise pattern of locomotion rather than the simple matter of habitat that governs overt bodily adaptations. Within the forest there are a number of ways of moving about. An animal can live on the forest floor or in the canopy, for instance, and within the canopy it can move in three particular ways: (a) by leaping—a function principally dictated by the hindlimbs; (b) by arm swinging ( brachiation)—a function particularly of the forelimbs; (c) by quadrupedalism—a function equally divided between the forelimbs and the hindlimbs. On the savanna, or in the woodland-savanna biome, which substantially demands adaptations for ground-living locomotion rather than those for tree-living, the possibilities are limited. If bipedal humans are discounted, there is a single pattern of ground-living locomotion, which is called quadrupedalism. Within this category there are at least two variations on the theme: (a) knuckle-walking quadrupedalism, and (b) digitigrade quadrupedalism. The former gait is characteristic of the African apes (chimpanzee and gorilla), and the latter of baboons and macaques, which walk on the flats of their fingers. After human beings, Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae are the most successful colonizers of nonarboreal habitats.

      The structural adaptations of primates resulting from locomotor differences are considered in more detail in the section Locomotion (primate), but they do not prove to be very extensive. Primates are a homogeneous group morphologically, and it is only in the realm of behaviour that differences between primate taxa are clearly discriminant. It can be said that the most successful primates (judged in terms of the usual criteria of population numbers and territorial spread) are those that have departed least from the ancestral pattern of structure but farthest from the ancestral pattern of behaviour. “Manners makyth man” is true in the widest sense of the word; in the same sense, manners delineate primate species.

Distribution and abundance

      The nonhuman primates have a wide distribution throughout the tropical latitudes of Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and South America. Within this tropical belt, which lies between latitudes 25° N and 30° S, they have a considerable vertical range. In Ethiopia the gelada (genus Theropithecus) is found living at elevations up to 5,000 metres (16,000 feet). Gorillas of the Virunga Mountains are known to travel across mountain passes at altitudes of more than 4,200 metres when traveling from one high valley to another. The howler monkeys (howler monkey) of Venezuela (Alouatta seniculus) live at 2,500 metres in the Cordillera de Merida, and in northern Colombia the durukuli (genus Aotus) is found in the tropical montane forests of the Cordillera Central.

 In habitat, primates are predominantly tropical, but few species of nonhuman primates extend their ranges well outside the tropics. The Barbary “ape” (Barbary macaque) (Macaca sylvanus) lives in the temperate forests of the Atlas (Atlas Mountains) and other mountain ranges of Morocco and Algeria. Some populations of rhesus monkey (M. mulatta) extended until the middle of the 20th century to the latitude of Beijing in northern China, and the Tibetan macaque (M. thibetana) is found from the warm coastal ranges of Fujian (Fukien) province to the cold mountains of Sichuan (Szechwan). One of the most remarkable, however, is the Japanese macaque (M. fuscata), which in the north of Honshu lives in mountains that are snow-covered for eight months of the year; some populations have learned to make life more tolerable for themselves by spending most of the day in the hot springs that bubble out and form pools in volcanic areas. Finally, two western Chinese species of snub-nosed monkey, the golden (Rhinopithecus roxellana) and black (R. bieti), are confined to high altitudes (up to 3,000 metres in the case of the former and to 4,500 metres in the latter), where the temperature drops below 0 °C (32 °F) every night and often barely rises above it by day.

  Although many primates are still plentiful in the wild, the numbers of many species are declining steeply. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), more than 70 percent of primates in Asia and roughly 40 percent of primates in South America, in mainland Africa, and on the island of Madagascar are listed as endangered (endangered species). A number of species, particularly the orangutan, the gorilla, some of the Madagascan lemurs (lemur), and some South American species, are in serious danger of extinction unless their habitats can be preserved in perpetuity and human predation kept under control. The populations of several species number only in the hundreds, and in 2000 a subspecies of African red colobus monkey (Procolobus badius) became the first primate since 1800 to be declared extinct.

      In the midst of these declines, the populations of some critically endangered primate species have increased. Concerted efforts to breed a type of marmoset, the golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia), in captivity have been successful; this species's reintroduction to the wild continues in Brazil. The estimated number of western lowland gorillas (G. gorilla gorilla), a species thought to be critically endangered, increased when a population of more than 100,000 was discovered in 2008 in the swamps of the Lac Télé Community Reserve in the Republic of the Congo.

Natural history

Reproduction and life cycle

 The stages of the life cycle of primates vary considerably in duration. Among the most primitive members of the group, these stages are broadly comparable to those of other mammals of similar size. Higher in the phylogenetic scale, they are substantially extended. The greatest difference is in the duration of the infant and juvenile stages combined; the least is in the gestation period, which, despite the general belief, cannot be consistently correlated with adult body size. Gibbons (gibbon), which weigh considerably less than macaques (macaque), have a 20 percent longer gestation period.

 The clear trend toward prolongation of the period of juvenile and adolescent life is probably to be associated with the corresponding trend toward a progressive elaboration of the brain. The extended period of adolescence means that the young remain under adult (primarily maternal) surveillance for a long period, during which time the juvenile acquires, by example from its mother and peers, the knowledge that will allow it to become properly integrated as a fully adult member of a complicated social system. One might therefore expect a close correlation between the period of adolescence, the brain size, and the complexity of the social system; and, insofar as the latter factor can be assessed, this appears to be the case.

Breeding periods

 The reproductive events in the primate calendar are copulation, gestation, birth, and lactation. Owing to the long duration of the gestation period, these phases occupy the female primate (among higher primates anyway) for a full year or more; then the cycle starts again. The female does not usually come into physiological receptivity until the infant of the previous pregnancy has been weaned.

 Most lemurs and lorises (loris) show one or more discrete breeding seasons during the year, during which time they may undergo more than one reproductive estrous cycle (estrus) (i.e., period of sexual activity). The breeding seasons are separated by periods of anestrus, which in bush babies (bush baby) and mouse lemurs are accompanied by changes in the skin of the external genitalia ( vulva), which closes over, completely sealing the vagina. When living in the wild in the Sudan, the lesser bush baby (Galago senegalensis) has an estrus that occurs only twice yearly, during December and August. In captivity, however, breeding seasons may occur at any period in the year. In the wild, birth seasons are closely correlated with the prevailing climate, but in captivity under equable laboratory conditions, this consideration does not apply. For instance, in its native Madagascar, the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) has only a single breeding season during the year, conception occurring in autumn (April) and births taking place in late winter (August and September). However, in zoos in the Northern Hemisphere, a seasonal inversion occurs in which the birth period shifts to late spring and early summer. These examples indicate the influence of environmental factors on the timing of the birth seasons.

      Reproductive cycles in tarsiers (tarsier), apes (ape), and many monkeys (monkey) continue uninterrupted throughout the year, though seasonality in births is characteristic mainly of monkey species living either outside the equatorial belt (5° north and south of the Equator) or at high elevations in equatorial regions, where dry seasons and seasonal food shortages occur. Seasonality of births in macaques (macaque) (genus Macaca species) has been documented in Japan, on Cayo Santiago in the Caribbean (where an introduced population thrives under seminatural conditions), and in India. Observations of langurs (langur) in India and Sri Lanka, of geladas (gelada) in Ethiopia, and of patas monkeys (patas monkey) in Uganda have also demonstrated seasonality in areas with well-marked wet and dry seasons. Those within the equatorial belt tend to display birth peaks rather than birth seasons. A birth peak is a period of the year in which a high proportion of births, but not by any means all, are concentrated. Equatorial primates such as guenons (guenon), colobus monkeys, howlers (howler monkey), gibbons (gibbon), chimpanzees (chimpanzee), and gorillas (gorilla) might be expected to show a pattern of births uniformly distributed throughout the year, but population samples are as yet too small to make this assumption, and some equatorial monkeys, such as squirrel monkeys (squirrel monkey) (genus Saimiri), are strictly seasonal breeders. Even in humans, there is evidence of high birth peaks. In Europe, the highest birth rates are reached in the first half of the year; in the United States, India, and countries in the Southern Hemisphere, in the second half. This may, however, be a cultural rather than an ecological phenomenon, for marriages in certain Western countries reach a peak in the closing weeks of the fiscal year, a fact that undoubtedly has some repercussions on the birth period.

gestation period and parturition

 The period during which the growing fetus is protected in the uterus is characterized by a considerable range of variation among primate species, but it shows a general trend toward prolongation as one ascends the evolutionary scale. Mouse lemurs, for example, have a gestation period of 54–68 days, lemurs 132–134 days, macaques 146–186 days, gibbons 210 days, chimpanzees 230 days, gorillas 255 days, and humans (on the average) 267 days. Even small primates such as bush babies have gestations considerably longer than those of nonprimate mammals of equivalent size, a reflection of the increased complexity and differentiation of primate structure compared with that of nonprimates. Although in primates there is a general trend toward evolutionary increase in body size, there is no absolute correlation between body size and the duration of the gestation period. Marmosets (marmoset), for example, are considerably smaller than spider monkeys (spider monkey) and howler monkeys (howler monkey) but have a slightly longer pregnancy (howler monkeys 139 days, “true” marmosets 130–150 days).

 An extraordinary and somewhat inexplicable difference exists between the dimensions of the pelvic (pelvic girdle) cavity and the dimensions of the head of the infant at birth in monkeys and humans on the one hand, and apes on the other. The head of the infant ape is considerably smaller than the pelvic cavity, so birth (parturition) occurs easily and without prolonged labour. When the head of the infant monkey engages in the pelvis, the fit is exact, and labour may be a prolonged and difficult affair, as it is generally with humans. Human parturition, however, is generally a much more extended process than that of monkeys. Like the human infant, the monkey is born head first. twin births are rare in most monkeys and apes, but marmosets and some lemurs and lorises habitually produce twins.

infancy

  The degrees of maturation and mother dependency at birth are obviously closely related phenomena. Newborn primate infants are neither as helpless as kittens, puppies, or rats nor as developed as newborn gazelles, horses, and other savanna-living animals. With a few exceptions, primate young are born with their eyes open and are fully furred. Exceptions are mouse lemurs (Microcebus), gentle lemurs (Hapalemur), and ruffed lemurs (Varecia), which bear more helpless (altricial) infants and carry their young in their mouth. Primate life being peripatetic, it is axiomatic that the infants must be able to cling to the mother's fur; just a few species (again, mouse lemurs and ruffed lemurs and a few others) leave their infants in nests while foraging, and lorises “park” their young, leaving them hanging under branches in tangles of vegetation. The young of most higher primates have grasping hands and feet at birth and are able to cling to the maternal fur without assistance; only humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas need to support their newborn infants, and humans do so longest.

      It seems likely that the difference between the African apes and humans in respect to postnatal grasping ability is related to the acquisition in man of bipedal walking. One of the anatomic correlates of the human gait is the loss of the grasping function of the big toe, which is aligned in parallel with the remaining digits. Such an arrangement precludes the use of the foot as a grasping extremity. The human infant—and to a lesser degree the gorilla infant—must depend largely on its grasping hands (hand) to support itself unaided. The fact that humans are habitually bipedal and that, consequently, the hands are freed from locomotor chores may also be a contributory factor; the human mother can move about and at the same time continue to support her infant. Selection for postnatal grasping, therefore, has not had the high survival value in humans that it has in nonhuman primates, in which the survival of the infant depends on its ability to hold on tightly. On the other hand, it is well known that newborn human infants can support their own weight, for short periods, by means of their grasping hands. Clearly then, adaptations for survival are not wholly lacking in the human species. Perhaps cultural factors have had the effect of suppressing natural selection for early infant grasping ability. The first factor may be the social (social structure) evolution of a division of labour between the sexes and a fixed home base, which has allowed the mother to park her infant with other members of the family as babysitters. A second factor may be more peripatetic communities, in which the invention of infant-carrying devices, such as the papoose technique of North American Indians, has made it unnecessary for the infant to support itself. Whatever the biological or cultural reasons, the human infant is more helpless than the young of all other primates.

      Once the primate infant has learned to support itself by standing on its own two (or four) feet, the physical phase of dependency is over; the next phase, psychological dependency, lasts much longer. The human child is metaphorically tied to its mother's apron strings for much longer periods than are the nonhuman primates. The reasons for this are discussed below. According to Adolph Schultz, the Swiss anthropologist whose comparative anatomic studies have illuminated knowledge of nonhuman primates since the mid-20th century, the juvenile period of psychological maternal dependency is 2¹/₂ years in lemurs, 6 years in monkeys, 7–8 years in most apes (though it now appears to be even longer than this in chimpanzees), and 14 years in humans.

Growth and longevity

      The prolongation of postnatal life among primates affects all life periods, including infantile, juvenile, adult, and senescent. Although humans are the longest-lived members of the order, the potential life span of the chimpanzee has been estimated at 60 years, and orangutans occasionally achieve this in captivity. The life span of a lemur, on the other hand, is about 15 years and a monkey's 25–30 years.

   The characteristic growth spurts of human infants in weight and height also occur in nonhuman primates but start earlier in the postnatal period and are of shorter duration. Primates differ from most nonprimate mammals by virtue of a delayed puberty in both sexes until growth is nearly complete; in humans, the peak of the growth spurt in boys comes slightly after the sexual maturity, whereas in girls the growth spurt precedes menarche. There is some controversy over the very existence of an adolescent growth spurt in nonhuman primates. In some species, males are very much larger than females; this extra growth occurs long after sexual maturity and rather rapidly, so it is possibly equivalent to the human growth spurt. The most remarkable case of such postmature growth is seen in orangutans. A male can mature physically in his early teens, or he can spend as much as 20 years as a subadult and then suddenly, within a year, almost double his weight and develop the cheek flanges characteristic of full maturity. It appears that this is related to social conditions; in proximity to a full-grown, dominant male, a subadult male's development will remain suppressed, and when the dominant male moves away (or, in a zoo, is removed from the vicinity), the subadult undergoes a flush of testosterone and matures rapidly.

locomotion

 Primate locomotion, being an aspect of behaviour that arises out of anatomic structure, shows much of the conservativeness and opportunism that generally characterizes the order. Primates with remarkably few changes in their skeletons and musculature have adopted a bewildering variety of locomotor patterns. The “natural” habitat of primates—in the historical sense—is the canopy of the forest. Although many primates have adopted the ground as their principal foraging area during the day, given the opportunity they will return to the trees to sleep at night. Trees provide cover from the climate and protection from predators; they are of course also a source of food. Only the gelada, the hamadryas baboon of the mountainous regions of Ethiopia, and the chacma baboon, which lives on the rocky coast of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Province), South Africa, are ground sleepers; yet even these animals seek the protection of the cliffs and rocky precipices of their habitats at night. No primate sleeps totally unprotected; as a consequence of their relative immunity from predation, primates are heavy sleepers.

Four types of locomotion

      The essential arboreality of primates has guaranteed the relative uniformity of the locomotor apparatus. Even humans, who have long since abandoned the trees as their principal lodging place, have only partially lost the physical adaptations for tree climbing; their hands, in particular, remain in the arboreal mold. Only the feet have lost their primitive prehensility in adapting to bipedal walking. Primate locomotion can be classified on behavioral grounds into four major types: vertical clinging and leaping, quadrupedalism, brachiation, and bipedalism. Within these major categories, there are a number of subtypes, and within these subtypes, there are an infinite number of variations between species and, by virtue of individual variability, within species. The differences between the four major categories lie principally in the degree to which the forelimbs and hindlimbs are used to climb, swing, jump, and run.

 Vertical clinging and leaping, for instance, is primarily a function of the hindlimbs (leg), as is bipedalism, whereas brachiation is performed exclusively with the forelimbs. Quadrupedalism involves both forelimbs and hindlimbs, of course, although not to an equal extent. Some quadrupeds are hindlimb-dominated; in others, the forelimb and the hindlimb are equally important. The hindlimb-dominated primates, such as the langurs and colobus monkeys, employ a large element of leaping in their movements, a less-notable feature of the more generalized quadrupeds such as guenons (guenon). The quadrupedal category is inevitably somewhat of a grab bag, and the gaits included in it have not yet been studied critically. One subtype, here designated as slow climbing, differs profoundly from the other subtypes of the category, being somewhat ponderous and devoid of elements of leaping or jumping. The species in this category are lorises (loris) and pottos (potto), all of which are arboreal and nocturnal.

      As many authorities who have studied locomotion in free-ranging primate species have pointed out, the classifications of locomotion into categories is a somewhat artificial procedure. A chimpanzee shows a variety of different gaits according to the circumstances of the environment: quadrupedalism (knuckle walking), climbing, bipedalism, and brachiation. This holds true also for the langurs (langur) and colobus monkeys, which are designated semibrachiators, which means that they mainly move quadrupedally (usually with a “galloping gait” rather than walking) but also jump across gaps and occasionally swing by their arms. Although the categories are phrased in behavioral terms, their implications are also anatomic. Brachiation is the mode of locomotion for which the animal is specifically adapted; the anatomic correlates of brachiation are quite unmistakable and can be determined in fossil bones as much as in living animals. In some instances, it may well be that a particular anatomy is misleading. It has been argued that the anatomy of the great apes (including humans), for instance, is that of a brachiator, yet in fact they seldom brachiate (humans rarely and adult gorillas probably never). Watching gorillas, in particular, suggests that what appeared at first to be a locomotor adaptation may actually be a feeding one; the gorilla sits erect amid its food, reaching all around it to pull it in, and thereby saves an enormous amount of energy. The shortened lumbar spine (giving a lowered centre of gravity), broad chest, enhanced mobility of the shoulder joint, and flexible wrist may be related to this feeding style. The gibbons' specializations for brachiation may be derived from these same traits, rather than the other way about.

      Changes in climate and geography during the evolutionary history of primates may also have led to structural atavisms in the anatomy of living primates. Many chimpanzees now living in woodland-savanna conditions in Africa, where the trees are widely spaced and generally unsuitable for the classic climbing style of forest-living chimpanzees, have adopted a largely ground-living life. Gorillas and chimpanzees are first and foremost knuckle walkers, but, given an environment like that of a zoo with a cage specially designed with lots of overhead bars and ropes, they will brachiate fairly frequently.

      When the subject of primate arboreal locomotion is studied in evolutionary terms by using fossils, it becomes clear that locomotor categories are not discrete but constitute a continuum of change from a hindlimb-dominated gait to a forelimb-dominated one. The best single indicator of gait, one that has the added advantage of being strictly quantitative, is the intermembral index. Briefly, the index is a ratio expressed as percentage of arm length to leg length; an index over 100 indicates relatively long arms. This provides a model by means of which the locomotion of an early primate can be inferred by determination of the intermembral index of the fossil skeleton. Animals do not necessarily fall discretely into categories. Species with indexes lying between those of clearly recognizable locomotor types represent transitional types, whose style of locomotion really does manifest features of both of the bracketing categories. Some lemurs have indexes that fall between 65 and 75, and their gait is a combination of vertical clinging and quadrupedalism. The South American spider monkeys (spider monkey) (genus Ateles), whose index lies between 100 and 108, show a type of locomotion that contains the elements of both quadrupedalism and brachiation.

      When the intermembral index is applied to fossil primates, it appears that the earliest primates living in the Eocene Epoch (54.8 million to 33.7 million years ago) must have moved about somewhat in the manner of modern vertical clingers and leapers. Quadrupedal gaits were well established during the Miocene Epoch (23.8 million to 5.3 million years ago) when the two major environmental types of quadrupedal gait— terrestrial and the arboreal—were established, with indexes in the region of 85–100 and 75–85, respectively. Brachiation, associated with a high intermembral index, was established as a way of arboreal life at the end of the Miocene, with the small hominid Oreopithecus from Italy. There is direct evidence of bipedalism's extending back four million years, and certain indirect evidence (see below Evolution and paleontology (primate)) suggests that bipedalism might have evolved in a modified form up to a million years before that.

Bipedalism

 Some degree of bipedal ability, of course, is a basic possession of the order Primates. All primates sit upright. Many stand upright without supporting their body weight by their arms, and some, especially the apes, actually walk upright for short periods. The view that the possession of uprightness is a solely human attribute is untenable; humans are merely the one species of the order that has exploited the potential of this ancestry to its extreme.

 Chimpanzees, gorillas and gibbons, macaques, spider monkeys (spider monkey), capuchin (capuchin monkey)s, and others are all frequent bipedal walkers. To define humans categorically as “bipedal” is not enough; to describe them as habitually bipedal is nearer the truth, but habit as such does not leave its mark on fossil bones. Some more precise definition is needed. The human walk has been described as striding, a mode of locomotion defining a special pattern of behaviour and a special morphology. Striding, in a sense, is the quintessence of bipedalism; it is a means of traveling during which the energy output of the body is reduced to a physiological minimum by the smooth, undulating flow of the progression. It is a complex activity involving the joints and muscles of the whole body, and it is likely that the evolution of the human gait took place gradually over a period of 10 million years or so.

 The pattern of locomotion of human ancestors immediately preceding the acquisition of bipedalism has long been a matter of controversy, and the question has not yet been resolved. The evidence derived from anatomic, physiological, and biochemical studies for the close affinity of chimpanzees and humans, and the slightly less close affinity of gorillas, would suggest that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestry. There have been claims that the wrist anatomy of australopithecines (Australopithecus) shows remnant knuckle-walking adaptations. The issue is still hotly debated, and some authorities continue to support a brachiation model for the ancestry of all the apes. Other authorities have proposed other solutions: semibrachiation, for example, and even a form of locomotion similar to that of tarsiers (tarsier) and other clingers and leapers. At the present time, there is insufficient information to elucidate the phylogeny of man's bipedal gait, except that it can be assumed to have involved a large measure of truncal uprightness.

Diet

 The diet of primates is a factor of their ecology that, during their evolution, has clearly played an important role in their dispersion and adaptive radiation as well as in the development of the teeth, jaws, and digestive system. Diet is also closely related to locomotor pattern and to body size.

      The principal food substances taken by primates may be divided into vegetable (fruits, flowers, leaves, nuts, barks, pith, seeds, grasses, stems, roots, and tubers) and animal (birds, birds' eggs, lizards, small rodents and bats, insects, frogs, and crustacea). The flesh of larger mammals (including primates) is not listed as an important item of nonhuman primate diet, with the sole exception of chimpanzees—it is taken by baboons in special circumstances that are not yet fully understood.

      While diet is selective and specific to the order in many mammalian groups, among primates it is difficult to establish any hard and fast rules. Although there are decided preferences for certain food items, catholicity is more characteristic than specificity. Generally speaking, primates are omnivorous, as the physiology of their digestive system attests. Relatively few examples of dietary specialization are to be found. The so-called leaf-eating monkeys, a sobriquet that embraces the whole of the subfamily Colobinae, including colobus monkey (colobus)s and langurs (langur), are by no means exclusively leaf eaters and according to season include flowers, fruit, and (in some cases) seeds in their diet. The howler monkeys (howler monkey) of the New World have a similar dietary preference.

 Broadly, however, certain overall dietary preferences are discernible. The leaf-eating langurs have already been mentioned. The apes (other than the mountain gorilla) are substantially fruit eaters. Many of the smaller nocturnal primitive species such as galagos (bush baby), dwarf lemurs, sportive lemurs, the aye-aye, and the slender loris are substantially insectivorous; the tarsier is probably the only primate that is exclusively carnivorous, feeding on insects, lizards, and snakes. The larger diurnal lemurs (e.g., typical lemurs, the sifaka, and the indri) are more vegetarian, including fruit, seeds, and leaves. It seems apparent that size, rather than activity rhythm, governs the nature of the primate diet. The small marmosets (marmoset) of the South American genus Callithrix have exclusively diurnal rhythms and are insectivorous and also eat gums, while the slightly larger, but equally diurnal, tamarins (genus Saguinus) are more omnivorous. An approximate cutoff point of 500 grams (Kay's threshold, after the primatologist Richard Kay, who first drew attention to it) has been proposed as an upper limit for species subsisting mainly on insects and a lower limit for those relying on leaves. The reason is that insects are small and hard to catch, and a large animal simply would not be able to catch enough to sustain it during its waking hours. The cellulose and hemicellulose components of leaves, on the other hand, require complex digestive processes, and a small animal would be unable to maintain a constant throughput. Fruit, as a dietary component, suffers from neither of these constraints.

Size in evolutionary perspective

      In evolutionary terms, increase in size has probably played a large part in determining the direction of primate evolution. Early primates of about 50 million years ago were small forest-living creatures whose molar teeth bore high, pointed cusps but were neither as tall nor as pointed as those of their insectivore-like ancestors, whose molars were ideally adapted for cracking the hard chitinous exoskeletons of insects. This fact suggests that the reduction of the molar cusps was associated with the adoption of a fruit-eating habit. Although this has some validity as a generalization, it should not be taken too literally, as most primates include some insects in their diet and of course there are many almost exclusively insectivorous forms, which have nonetheless reduced the height and acuity of their molar cusps. Increasing body size, a trend that is clearly apparent throughout primate evolution, would have been associated with the adoption of supplementary sources of food. An increase in size and the gradual addition of bulk foods to the diet would in turn have affected the habitat and the pattern of locomotion of primates. Suitable adaptations in this case would have been the facility to climb, leap, and balance in trees.

 It is noteworthy that, during evolution, the development of a prehensile foot preceded that of a prehensile hand. Vertical-clinging primates such as the tarsiers (tarsier) or small, squirrel-like quadrupeds such as the marmosets (marmoset)—all of which have prehensile feet but not completely prehensile hands—by remaining or becoming small, have avoided the evolutionary pressures that have impinged on larger primates. A large arboreal primate without entirely prehensile hands is at a considerable disadvantage in moving about in the canopy of trees, but a small one suffers little disadvantage. Amid the large and firm branches, size is no particular hazard, but at the periphery of the crown, where the fruit is most abundant and the branches are slender and flexible, the risk of falling is increased. It is therefore likely that the combination of an increase in body size associated with the inevitable shift toward a bulk diet led first to the evolution of a grasping hand, then to the appearance of a prehensile hand, and finally to an opposable thumb. Four prehensile extremities are obviously more effective than two in defying gravity.

      Such adaptations of the forelimbs would have had the effect of equalizing the role of the limbs. The limbs of vertical clingers are functionally disparate, the lower pair (leg) being dominantly propulsive and the upper secondary and purely supportive. The limbs of quadrupeds, however, are more homogeneous, both pairs having a propulsive function during running. Thus, it would seem that the transition in locomotor grade between vertical clinging and leaping and quadrupedalism came about as an adaptation to increased body size. Size, diet, ecology, locomotion, and anatomic structure provide a constellation of causes and effects that are critical factors in the evolution of the primates.

Forest and savanna

  The chief physiognomic features of rainforests (rainforest), the ancestral home of the order Primates and the principal habitat of nonhuman primates today, are the evergreen broad-leaved trees that collectively form a closed canopy, so opaque to sunlight that the forest floor is in perpetual twilight. Epiphytes (epiphyte) and thick-stemmed lianas (liana) drape the trees, linking one crown to another and providing aerial pathways for monkeys to pass from tree to tree through a continuum of interlacing branches, a three-dimensional maze that provides home, restaurant, shopping districts, and highways for primates. Three strata of rainforests are broadly distinguishable: an understory, a middle story, and an upper story. The understory, consisting of shrubs and saplings, is often “closed,” the crowns of the constituent trees overlapping one another to form a dense continuous horizontal layer. The middle story is characterized by trees that are in lateral contact but do not overlap; the highest story, by tall trees, some 50 metres (about 165 feet) or more, that form a discontinuous layer of umbrella-shaped crowns. The occasional “emergent” forest giant may tower above the highest layer of the canopy. There is some evidence, much of it conflicting, that some zonation of forest primates occurs within the forest canopy. The stratification of forest is extremely variable; the number of layers tends to diminish from three to two in secondary forest, dry deciduous forest, and montane forest and from two to one as temperate zone, tropical woodland, or montane woodland supervenes.

 Tropical grasslands, or savannas (savanna), are also the homes of primates in Africa and Asia; no savanna-living primates exist in South America. Tropical grasslands comprise a mixture of trees and grasses, the proportion of trees to grass varying directly with the rainfall. Areas of high seasonal rainfall support single-story woodlands of tall trees, while lush grasses form the ground vegetation; but, where rainfall is both seasonal and low, the trees consist of stubby xerophilous (dry-loving) shrubs and short, tussocky grasses. The principal primates of the savanna are the ground-living species: in Africa, the vervets, baboons (baboon), and patas monkey; and in Asia, the macaques (macaque) and the Hanumān langur.

      Tropical montane forests (cloud forest) or tropical rainforests at high altitude also abound in primates in Africa, Asia, and South America. In equatorial Africa, certain primate species have colonized the montane-savanna regions, or moorlands, where the rugged mountainous terrain and seasonal food scarcity support herds of geladas (gelada) and hamadryas baboons. These high mountaineers of Africa have no ecological counterparts in Asia or South America.

Form and function

General structure

 The basis of the success of the order Primates is the relatively unspecialized nature of their structure and the highly specialized plasticity of their behaviour. This combination has permitted the primates throughout their evolutionary history to exploit the wide variety of novel ecological opportunities that have come their way. Although there are a few highly specialized species among the lower primates (the aye-aye, the tarsier, the potto, and the lorises (loris), for instance), the higher primates, collectively known as the anthropoids, are extremely conservative in their structure; morphologically speaking, they have maintained a position in the evolutionary midstream and have avoided the potential stagnation of specialized life near the banks. Specialization is not always a liability; in times of environmental stability, the specialized animal enjoys many advantages, but, in a rapidly changing world, it is the less-specialized animals that are more likely to survive and flourish. The plasticity of primate behaviour is largely a function of the brain. The primate brain is distinguished by its relatively large size compared with the size of the body as a whole; it is also notable for the complexity and elaboration of the cerebral cortex, the function of which is to receive, analyze, and synthesize the incoming impulses from the sense organs and to convert them into appropriate motor actions, which in turn constitute behaviour.

      Primates are essentially arboreal animals whose limbs are adapted for climbing, leaping, and running in trees. Active arboreal life requires the mechanical assistance of a long tail and sensitive, grasping hands and feet with opposable thumbs and big toes to aid in climbing and to ensure stability on slender branches high above the ground. Active arboreal locomotion also requires a much more accurate judgment of distances than life on the ground; this is facilitated by the development of stereoscopic vision, the anatomic basis of visual judgments in depth. The forward-facing eyes of primates are adaptations for this type of visual precision. A highly developed sense of smell is not nearly as important for animals leading an arboreal life as it is for those on the ground. Many primates thus have a much-reduced olfactory mechanism; noses are shorter, and the nasal concha (scroll bones) of the nose are reduced in number and complexity compared with most nonprimate mammals—although it should not be overlooked that many lemurs and New World monkeys do enjoy a rich olfactory world, especially in the social sphere.

 Above all, the principal evolutionary trend of primates has been the elaboration of the brain, particularly of that portion of the cerebral hemispheres known as the neopallium or neocortex. A neocortex is characteristic of higher vertebrates, such as mammals, which operate under the control of multiple sources of sensory input. In many mammals, the olfactory system dominates the senses, and the cerebral hemispheres consist largely of palaeocortex—the “smell brain”—of lower vertebrates. The arboreal habit of primates has led to a dethronement of the olfactory sense and the accession of a tactile, visually dominant sensory system. This evolutionary trend has resulted in the dramatic expansion and differentiation of the neocortex.

Vertebral column and posture

      All primates retain collarbones (clavicle) (lost in many mammalian groups), a separate radius and ulna in the forearm, and a separate tibia and fibula in the lower leg. The single exception to this among living primates is the tarsier, in which the fibula becomes fused to the tibia.

      The primate vertebral column shows a basic mammalian pattern of components, including an “anticlinal” vertebra situated in the mid-thoracic (upper-back) region of the spinal column and marking the transition between the forelimb and hindlimb segments. In a galloping greyhound, the anticlinal vertebra is at the apex of the acute curve of the back. An anticlinal vertebra is characteristic of all quadrupeds and is seen in all primate families except the apes, whose posture is upright or semiupright. The evolutionary trend in the vertebral column is toward shortening the lumbar, sacral, and caudal regions. Extreme shortening in the lumbar region, with complete loss of the caudal (tail) vertebrae, occurs in gibbons, the great apes, and humans. Prehensility of the tail is a specialization of certain New World monkeys, but it appears also for a brief period in the infants of many Old World monkey groups, in which it provides an important mechanical aid to survival.

Hands (hand) and feet

  With three exceptions, all primates have retained five digits on hand and foot. The exceptions are the spider monkeys (spider monkey) and the so-called woolly spider monkey of South America and the colobus monkeys (colobus) of Africa, which have lost or reduced the thumb. This appears to be an adaptation for locomotion, the rationale for which is not fully understood at present.

 All, though to different degrees, possess prehensile (grasping) hands and all (except humans) prehensile feet. The hands of catarrhines show a greater range of precise manipulative activity than those of other primates. Lemurs, for example, lack the functional duality of the hands of most apes and Old World monkeys (catarrhines). Duality in hand function has been described in terms of precision and power grips. The power grip of lemurs and lorises is very well developed, but the precision grip is lacking. The New World monkeys show a considerable advance over primitive primates in tactile sensitivity, but they possess less functionally effective hands in prehensile terms than Old World monkeys.

 The critical component of the prehensile hand in terms of skilled manipulation is the opposable thumb—a thumb, that is to say, that is capable of being moved freely and independently. The movement of opposition is a rotary movement in which the thumb, swinging about its own axis, comes to face the lower surface of the tips of the fingers. The opposable thumb is the basis of the precision grip that, though present to some extent in all primates, is particularly highly developed in man. Opposability is present to some degree in most primates but varies considerably in its functional effectiveness as an instrument of fine manipulation. Humans and baboons are preeminent in this respect. The apes, having short thumbs and long fingers, are handicapped in relation to delicate manual dexterity but are adept in the coarser elements of hand use, particularly in relation to tree climbing.

Teeth (tooth)

 A dentition with different kinds of teeth (heterodonty)—incisors, canines, and cheek teeth—is characteristic of all primates and indeed of mammals generally. Heterodonty is a primitive characteristic, and primates have evolved less far from the original pattern than most mammals. The principal changes are a reduction in the number of teeth and an elaboration of the cusp pattern of the molars.

      The dental formula of primitive placental mammals (placental mammal) is assumed to have been 5 . 1 . 4 . 3 / 5 . 1 . 4 . 3 = 44 teeth (the numbers being the numbers respectively of pairs of incisors, canines, premolars, and molars in the upper and lower jaws). No living primate has retained more than two incisors in the upper jaw. The incisors are subject to considerable variation in strepsirrhines (lemur). Characteristically, the upper incisors are peglike, one or the other pair often being absent; in the lower jaw, the incisors show a peculiar conformation that has been likened structurally and functionally to a comb. This dental comb is composed of the lower canines (canine tooth) and lower incisors compressed from side to side and slanted forward; the most specialized dental combs—seen, for example, in the fork-crowned lemur (genus Phaner) and the needle-clawed galago (genus Euoticus)—are used for scraping exudates off bark, but other species use the structure for piercing fruit, for nipping off leaves, and for grooming the fur. Canines (canine tooth) are present throughout the order but show remarkable variation in size, shape, projection, and function. Characteristically, the teeth of Old World monkeys have a function in the maintenance of social order within the group as well as an overtly offensive role; their function as organs of digestion is relatively unimportant. They are large and subject to sexual dimorphism, being larger in males than females. Great apes have smaller canines than Old World monkeys, though still sexually dimorphic; human canines are smaller still, and there is no size difference between the sexes.

      The trend in the evolution of the cheek teeth has been to increase the number of cusps and reduce the number of teeth. Both molars and premolars show this tendency. No living primate has four premolars; primitive primates, tarsiers, and New World monkeys have retained three on each side of each jaw, but in the apes and Old World monkeys, there are only two premolars. The primitive premolars are uniform in shape and are unicuspid, but in primates the most posterior premolar tends to evolve either one or two extra cusps (molarization), an adaptation that extends the cheek-tooth row for a herbivorous diet. In species with large upper canines, the most anterior lower premolar assumes a peculiar shape known as sectorial, functioning as a hone for the scythelike canine. In humans, whose canines are small and unremarkable, the first and second premolars are identical in shape and two-cusped.

      The trend in the morphology of the molars has been to increase the primitive three cusps to four or five, the less-insectivorous species having four cusps on the molar crown in the upper jaw and five cusps on the lower. A tendency in smaller New World monkeys has been to reduce the molar series from three to two in both jaws.

Snouts, muzzles, and noses

 The reduction of the snout in primates is a correlate of the diminution of the sense of smell, or olfaction. To a great extent, visual acuity and manual dexterity have replaced the sensitive, inquiring nose found in so many nonprimate mammals. A marked reduction in the complexity of the nasal concha (“scroll” bones of the nose), the richness of the innervation of the olfactory mucous membrane, and the sensitivity of the moist tip of the nose—the rhinarium—are associated with the reduction in length of the primate snout. Still, although the trend in primate evolution is toward a dethronement of the primacy of the sense of smell, there are still some good snouts to be seen in those lower primates that retain a naked moist rhinarium attached to the upper lip.

      Lemurs (lemur), lorises (loris), tarsiers (tarsier), and New World monkeys depend for many aspects of their social and reproductive behaviour on olfactory signals, by means of special scent glands distributed in different regions of the body but congregated principally in the anal and perineal regions (in lemurs and lorises) or in the sternal region (in New World monkeys and tarsiers). Marking behaviour, the placing of scent at various points in the environment, is a prominent feature of the repertoire of communication in these primates. Marking behaviour ceases to be of much importance in the Old World monkeys and apes, with some exceptions such as mandrills (mandrill), siamangs (siamang), concolor gibbons (gibbon), and even orangutans (orangutan) among the hominoids. All of these primates possess sternal glands, but in all of them the structures by which olfactory signals are given and received are diminished. But all higher primates, including humans, sniff at unfamiliar items of food before placing them in the mouth.

  The shape of the nose of higher primates is one of the most reliable means of distinguishing Old World monkeys from New World monkeys at a glance. In New World monkeys (the Platyrrhini, meaning “flat nosed”), the nose is broad, and the nostrils are set wide apart, well separated by a broad septum, and point sideways. In the apes and Old World monkeys (the Catarrhini, meaning “downward nosed”), the nostrils are set close together, point forward or downward, and are separated by a very narrow septum.

      Some Old World monkeys—particularly those that have adopted a ground-living way of life, such as baboons and mandrills (mandrill), of the subfamily Cercopithecinae—appear to have readopted a long snout during their evolution. This structure, however, is not primarily olfactory in function but seems, rather, to be allometric, more closely related to the large size of the jaws and the prominence of the canine teeth; it should be considered a dental muzzle rather than an olfactory one.

Sensory reception and the brain

      Among mammals in general, the olfactory system is the primary receptor for environmental information; consequently, the brain of most mammals is dominated by the olfactory centres. In primates the sense of smell is considerably less important than the well-developed visual system and highly refined sense of touch. The primate brain is enlarged in the specific areas concerned with vision (occipital lobes) and touch (parietal lobes) and thus takes a characteristic shape throughout the higher primates.

Touch

 The skin of the primate hand is well adapted for tactile discrimination. Meissner's corpuscles, the principal receptors for touch in hairless skin, are best developed in apes and humans, but they can be found in all primates. Structurally correlated with a high level of tactile sensitivity are certain anatomic features of the skin of the hands and feet, such as the absence of pads on the palms and soles and the presence of a finely ridged pattern of skin corrugations known as dermatoglyphics (the basis for fingerprints).

Eyes and vision

  The evolutionary trend toward frontality of the eyes has not proceeded as far in most lemurs as in lorises and more advanced primates. In primitive mammals the central axes of the two bony orbits are 140° apart. In lemurs this angle is considerably less, 60°–70°, and in the apes and monkeys and in the slender loris (genus Loris), the divergence has been reduced to 20°. It should be noted that the axes of the eyeballs (as distinct from the bony orbits) in apes and monkeys are, in fact, parallel.

       colour vision is of considerable advantage to arboreal animals living on fruits and insects. Most mammals have both rod and cone receptors in their retinas, and almost all primates have at least two kinds of cones, a short-wavelength (blue) type and a medium–long-wavelength (red-green) type. All, therefore, seem to have well-developed colour vision, the exceptions so far known being some of the nocturnal species: durukulis (durukuli) of South America, the tarsiers, and at least some of the galagos. Catarrhines and howler monkeys have separate red- and green-responding cones, determined by closely linked loci on the X chromosome. In most other investigated platyrrhines (New World monkeys), red and green are determined by alleles at a single locus, again on the X chromosome; thus, males are always dichromatic, whereas females may be either dichromatic (if homozygous) or trichromatic (if heterozygous). It is suggested that, during the evolution of catarrhines, the red-green locus duplicated, one of the daughter loci fixing the red gene and the other the green.

Nervous integration

      The elaboration of touch and vision supplements the senses of smell, hearing, and taste, providing the primate with a sensory armament of great range and flexibility. The primate central nervous system is sufficiently refined to deal with the elaborate bombardment of environmental information reaching it. Association areas provide connections between the input and output centres of the brain—the motor and sensory cortex. Association areas are the memory banks where the memory of past experience is encoded in the infinitely complicated plexiform arrangement of the neurons, the brain cells, and their processes. All sensory impulses reaching the cortical centres of the central nervous system are routed through the association areas for conditioning, as it were, before reaching the effector side or output side where the appropriate response is initiated in the cells of the motor cortex. The more highly developed the association areas of the brain are, the more specific and appropriate is the behaviour and the more versatile is the animal in facing environmental demands.

The brain

      The principal evolutionary trend in brain development has been toward elaboration. The neocortex of higher primates possesses highly developed associative functions, an aptitude for receiving, analyzing, and synthesizing the sensory input from visual, olfactory, auditory, gustatory, and tactile receptors and converting them into the appropriate motor responses.

      The brain of monkeys and apes is larger, both absolutely and relatively, than that of lemurs, lorises, or tarsiers. For instance, the weight of the simplest anthropoid brain, that of a marmoset, is three times greater than the brain weight of a bush baby of comparative size. This quantitative increase is attributable in part to the elaboration of the regions of the neocortex concerned with tactile and visual sensitivity and in part to the elaboration of the intrinsic pathways connecting one part of the brain with another. The large brain of humans is attributable not so much to an increased nerve cell content as to an increase in the size of the nerve cells and to a greater complexity of the connections linking one cell to another.

      The external form of the anthropoid cerebral cortex is characterized by a complicated pattern of folds and fissures (sulci and gyri) in the brain surface. The fissural pattern is seen in its simplest form in the marmosets, but in the larger New World monkeys (capuchins, for instance), the cerebrum is richly convoluted. Gyri and sulci are well marked in Old World monkeys and in the apes, the complexity of the pattern closely approximating the tortuous mazelike pattern seen in humans.

Reproductive system (reproductive system, animal)

Male and female genitalia

      The functions of the individual organs of reproductive systems are fairly uniform throughout the primates, but, in spite of this physiological homology, there is a remarkable degree of variation in minor detail of organs between groups—particularly in the external genitalia, which, by their variation, provide a morphological basis for the reproductive isolation of the species. There could be no more effective barrier to mating between different species than incompatibility of the male and female sex organs.

      Among the characteristics of the primate order as listed by the 19th-century zoologist George Mivart (Mivart, Saint George Jackson), the penis is described as “pendulous” and the testes as “scrotal.” In contrast to most other mammals (bats being the principal exception), the primate penis is not attached to the abdominal wall but hangs free. The testes, with a few exceptions among the lemurs, in which they are withdrawn seasonally, lie permanently in the scrotal sac, to which they migrate from their intra-abdominal position some time before birth (in humans) or after birth (in nonhuman primates). In all primates except modern humans, tarsiers, and some South American monkeys, the penis contains a small bone called the baculum, a typically mammalian character. The uterus of female primates shows all grades of transition between the two-horned (bicornuate) uterus, typical of most mammals, to the single-chambered (simplex) uterus of the higher primates and humans.

      Variations between primate taxa are demonstrated most strikingly by the glans penis, scrotum, and perineum of the male and by the clitoris and labial folds of the female vulva. In the clitoris, there is in most primates a small bone, the baubellum, homologous with the baculum of the penis. The length and form of the clitoris, which when elongated mimics the penis (as in spider monkeys (spider monkey), for instance), are a potent source of confusion in determining the sex of certain New World primates. The coloration of the male scrotum in forest-living primates, particularly of the guenon (genus Cercopithecus) and in drills (drill) and mandrills (mandrill) (genus Mandrillus), shows an infinite range of variations and provides a species-recognition signal of considerable effectiveness.

      The external appearance of the genitalia undergoes seasonal variation in a number of primates. In the male, swellings of the testes and colour changes of the scrotum occur, and, in the female, swelling and coloration of the vulva and perineal region herald ovulation, sometimes most obtrusively. Turgidity and excessive vascularity of the tissues of the perineum are probably characteristic of all mammals, but there are certain primate species in which this engorgement reaches monstrous proportions, notably baboons, mangabeys, some macaques, and chimpanzees. Regions other than the primary sex organs may also be affected by hormones circulating at certain periods of the reproductive cycle. For instance, in the gelada (Theropithecus), the skin on the front of the female chest, which normally bears a string of caruncles resembling the beads of a necklace, becomes engorged and brightly coloured. A German zoologist, Wolfgang Wickler, has suggested that this is a form of sexual mimicry, the chest mimicking the perineal region. The observation that geladas spend many hours a day feeding in a sitting posture provides a feasible, Darwinian explanation of this curious physiological adaptation.

Placenta

      The placenta, the defining characteristic of all eutherian mammals (placental mammal), is a vascular structure that permits physiological interchange of blood and body fluids between the mother and the fetus and the breakdown products of the fetal metabolism; it also provides a two-way barrier preventing the passage of some, but not all, noxious substances and organisms such as bacteria and viruses from one individual to the other and is the source of hormones such as estrogens.

      The placenta is a flat, discoid-shaped “cake” in humans, some of the other monkeys and apes, and the tarsiers. In many monkeys, it is bidiscoidal, having two linked portions. The placenta is intimately attached on its outer surface to the endometrium, the lining of the uterus, by fingerlike processes (villi) that embed themselves in the endometrium, where complete vascular connections between the two circulations are achieved. The connection between fetal and maternal circulations appears as two distinct types among primates, a distinction that is believed to have had an important effect on the evolution of the order. In the first type (epitheliochorial), found in the lemurs and lorises, several cellular layers separate the maternal and fetal bloodstreams and thus limit the passage of molecules of serum proteins. In the second type (hemochorial), found in tarsiers, monkeys, and apes, the relationship is much more intimate, there being no cell layers separating the two circulations so that serum proteins can easily pass. In haplorrhines the endometrium becomes highly vascularised about two weeks after ovulation, in preparation for the possible implantation of a zygote; if this does not occur, it is shed via menstruation. The placenta is shed at birth in all primates and, except rarely among humans, is eaten by the mother.

Historical background of primate studies

      The order Primates has been studied with vigour by scientists since the time of Galen Of Pergamum. Aristotle and Hippocrates, in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, recognized the similarity of man and apes, but it was Galen who demonstrated the kinship by dissection. He wrote, “The ape is likest to man in viscera, muscles, arteries, veins, nerves and in the form of bones.” It should be noted that Galen was in fact referring to monkeys, primarily to the Barbary “ape” (Barbary macaque) (a species of macaque, Macaca sylvanus), and not to the true apes, which were unknown to Westerners until the 15th century. None of these early scientists saw any evolutionary significance in the similarity of humans and “apes,” a correspondence that they regarded as purely coincidental. An inkling of humans' relationship with primates must have penetrated the mind of St. Albertus Magnus (Albertus Magnus, Saint), probably the leading naturalist of the Middle Ages, who produced a classification of animal life in his book De animalibus. Albertus's classification, which placed man between “apes” (monkeys) on the one hand and “animals” on the other, provides the first whiff of the “missing-link” concept, which later was to befog the issue of humans' place in nature.

      The Dark Ages were aptly named as far as knowledge of primates is concerned. The first evidence of a renaissance of interest was in the time of Vesalius (Vesalius, Andreas), the great Belgian anatomist of the 16th century, who published a comparative anatomy of man and “apes” in order to confound the precepts of Galen. He did not succeed in disproving Galen's assertion that “ape is likest to man,” but he unwittingly succeeded in stirring up an interest in the biology of primates that has never flagged since. The first true ape studied as a scientific specimen was a chimpanzee dissected by Edward Tyson (Tyson, Edward), an English anatomist, in 1699. Tyson's specimen, which he called the “Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris,” is housed to this day in the Natural History Museum, London, mounted in a standing position reflecting Tyson's belief that he had discovered the Pygmy, a race of humans known since the time of the ancient Greeks. Tyson wrote of his “pygmie” that it was “no man, nor yet a common ape but a sort of animal between both.” It never occurred to Tyson or his contemporaries, who believed that all animals had been created independently in their current image, that humans, apes, and monkeys were connected by common evolutionary descent. In 1758 Carolus Linnaeus (Linnaeus, Carolus)—the father of animal and plant classification—added the lemurs and bats to the monkeys, apes, and man and called the whole assemblage the Primates. His conclusion was regarded as a grave blow to human dignity, and it was followed by new classifications such as that of Johann Blumenbach (Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich) in 1776, placing man in a separate order. Man was not again considered part of the primate order until a century later when the English anatomist St. George Mivart (Mivart, Saint George Jackson), in the climate of post-Darwinian thought, published his classification of primates.

      The first evolutionist was a French scholar of the late 18th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste), who saw animal life as an uninterrupted continuity in which old species were transformed into new species in a sequence of increasing complexity and perfection. However, it was Georges Cuvier (Cuvier, Georges, Baron), a rabid antievolutionist, who in 1821 had the historic distinction of describing Adapis, the first fossil primate genus ever recognized. Fossils such as Adapis, Cuvier believed, were the remains of animals destroyed by past catastrophes such as floods and earthquakes, and living animals were new stocks divinely created to fill the vacuum—a view consistent with the widely held notion that species were immutable. During the early 19th century, a number of geologists and biologists questioned the doctrine of immutability, but it was not until 1859, with the publication of Charles Darwin's (Darwin, Charles) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, that positive evidence was provided, along with a sound alternative theory. The Darwinian contention that humans not only had evolved but had evolved from a simian (apelike) ancestor resulted in acrimonious debate among scientists, theologians, philosophers, and laymen. As influential zoologists and anatomists rose to support Darwin, humanity's primate consanguinity began to be accepted, if not actually relished. Today, few scientists deny that humans and the lower primates belong in the same order; in fact, much current research is directed toward closing the apparent gap between the highest of the nonhuman primates, chimpanzees and gorillas, and humans.

      In times past, the public image of primates was largely dictated by prevailing religious beliefs. In Asian countries, where primates abound, monkeys have for a long time been regarded with various degrees of deference that—among Hindus in India, for instance—amounts almost to worship. In Europe and North America, where monkeys and apes are totally absent, no religious sect has attached divine significance to them; in fact, the reverse has been the case, monkeys at various times having been regarded as the personification of evil and depravity, familiars of the devil. This image, however, is fading as a result of instruction in schools and advances in naturalistic presentation of primates in zoos and in the media. The nonhuman primate is generally accepted by Western and other cultures as an animal of peculiar interest to humanity with many amusing and endearing qualities.

      The activities of nonhuman primates, however, are less endearing to farmers and agriculturists in certain parts of the world. In South Africa, the chacma baboon (chacma) (Papio ursinus) competes with domestic sheep for grazing lands and is an occasional predator of lambs; in West and Central Africa, native crops are subject to daily assaults by forest-living monkeys; and in India, macaques (macaque), which have been accorded a semisacred status, live alongside people in towns and villages and are parasitic upon them for food and shelter.

      Scientific interest in nonhuman primates—their structure at all levels and their way of life—is currently in the ascendancy. Their value as research animals has decreased in recent years, as a result of both conservation concerns and ethical qualms, but, at the beginning of the 21st century, 100,000 or more monkeys were still being consumed annually by laboratories in the study of human diseases, the production of vaccines, experimental organ transplantation, the testing of drugs, and even clinical trials of new cosmetics (cosmetic). Their scientific usefulness has raised important problems of conservation of primate stocks in the wild, and exportation of monkeys is no longer permitted from many countries. Other research fields depending upon observation and experimentation with nonhuman primates include those of endocrinology, neurology, psychology, and sociology. As a result of such studies, much is learned that is of great significance for humans and the betterment of society.

Evolution and paleontology

Renewed interest in primate origins

      Beginning in the 1950s, there was a notable expression of interest in primate paleontology. Since then, hardly a year has passed without the announcement of some new major discovery. New sites have been opened up and old discoveries redescribed and reallocated. New techniques in geologic dating, palynology (the study of fossil pollen), paleoclimatology and paleoecology, and taphonomy (the interpretation of fossil sites) have helped to lift primate paleontology into the forefront of the life sciences and have aroused public interest to an unprecedented level. The popularity of all aspects of the evolution of human beings is reflected, for instance, in the spate of books covering this field published during this period.

      The African continent has contributed the greatest share of significant early finds. Fayum in Egypt; Rusinga, Songhor, Kalodirr, Fort Ternan, Kanapoi, and Koobi Fora in Kenya; Olduvai (Olduvai Gorge) and Laetolil (Laetoli) in Tanzania; Omo and Hadar in Ethiopia; and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai, Swartkrans, and Makapansgat in South Africa are names with which every anthropology student and much of the general public are familiar.

      Elsewhere, pieces of this colossal worldwide jigsaw puzzle have been discovered in Europe, notably in Turkey, Greece, Hungary, France, and Italy; in the Siwālik Hills (Siwalik Range) of northwestern India; in China and Burma; in the ever-prolific Middle Eocene Bridger Beds of North America; and in Colombia, Argentina, and Bolivia. The 1990s saw a proliferation of discoveries of the previously impoverished fossil record of New World monkeys.

      While new discoveries have clarified the human story, older ones, which had served only to cloud it, have been repudiated. Piltdown man was shown unequivocally to be a fake in 1953; and Galley Hill man in England, the Olmo remains in Italy, and the Calaveras skull in the United States have been shown to be recent intrusions (burials in the case of Galley Hill and Olmo, fraudulent in the case of Calaveras) into Pliocene (Pliocene Epoch) or Pleistocene (Pleistocene Epoch) levels (5.3 million to 10,000 years ago). Questionable finds from the remoter geologic period of the Eocene (Eocene Epoch) and Oligocene (Oligocene Epoch) epochs (54.8 million to 23.8 million years ago) have also been reexamined, with the result that a number of confusing fossils have been dismissed.

      Progress in constructing the phylogeny of the primates has been bedeviled by a number of controversies concerning taxonomy and nomenclature. New-school and old-school taxonomists have come into conflict. But, with the rapid advances in molecular genetics, in the new concepts of phylogenetic species, and in population anthropology, a fresh equilibrium is slowly being acquired as the pendulum swings between the traditional “splitting,” in which every new discovery was provided with a new generic name, and the reactionary “lumping” of such taxa as genera. Finally, cladistic methodology has become virtually universal, and most biologists and palaeontologists today accept the principle that a taxonomic group should be monophyletic (i.e., including only—and all—the descendants of a common ancestor).

The primate fossil record

Cretaceous (Cretaceous Period)

      The known temporal range of supposed primates was extended to about 65 million years ago (Late Cretaceous (Cretaceous Period) Epoch) by the discovery in Montana, U.S., of five teeth, representing two species of insectivore-like primates that were assigned in 1965 to a new genus, Purgatorius. This diagnosis, based on the characters of one premolar and four molar teeth since augmented by a few complete jaws, is not by any means universally accepted.

Paleocene (Paleocene Epoch)

      The first known supposed primates date to about 60 million years ago, as complete skulls and partial postcranial skeletons are available for the genera Plesiadapis, Ignacius, and Palaechthon from Europe and North America. The skulls show a number of dental specializations, including, in the case of Plesiadapis, procumbent rodentlike incisors in the upper and lower jaw and the absence of other antemolar teeth, though the molar teeth show more plausible primate affinities. Recent finds of limb bones, especially finger bones, of Ignacius and other genera have suggested that some, perhaps all, of these Paleocene supposed primates may actually belong to the order Dermoptera, whose only living representative is the gliding colugo (flying lemur) (“flying lemur”) of Southeast Asia. If this is so, then the Paleocene fossil record of primates is reduced to a handful of teeth of dubious status from China and France.

Eocene

      The known fossil families of the Eocene Epoch (54.8 million to 33.7 million years ago) include the Tarsiidae (tarsiers), the Adapidae (which include probable ancestors of lemurs and lorises), and the Omomyidae (which include possible ancestors of the monkeys and apes).

      The family Adapidae and the related Notharctidae contain two North American genera, Notharctus and Smilodectes, which are well represented in the fossil deposits of the Bridger Basin, Wyoming, U.S., and Adapis, Europolemur, Anchomomys, and Pronycticebus from Europe. Notharctus and Smilodectes are not thought to be antecedent to living lemurs, though Notharctus was not unlike the modern lemurs in size and general appearance. On both morphological and zoogeographical grounds, particularly the structure of the foot bones, the Adapidae may have provided the stem from which the living lemurs and lorises evolved; one genus, Europolemur, is even known to have a had a toilet claw, the large claw that in modern species replaces a nail on the second toe of the foot. Representatives of the Omomyidae have been found in North America, Europe, Egypt, and Asia.

      The Eocene Tarsiidae (tarsier), represented by the European species Necrolemur antiquus, found in the Quercy deposits of France, and Afrotarsius chatrathi, from the Fayum of Egypt, are likely to contain the ancestor of the modern genus Tarsius. The tarsier is indeed a “living fossil” (in the best sense of that overworked term), and teeth referred to the modern genus Tarsius are known from the Eocene Epoch of China and the Miocene Epoch (23.8 million to 5.3 million years ago) of Thailand.

      Traces of what are probably the earliest monkeylike primates (Simiiformes) come from 45-million-year-old deposits in southern China. Eosimias, a tiny fossil known mainly by jaws and a few foot bones, has features that are plausibly argued to be those expected in the earliest ancestors of the Simiiformes. From slightly later, in Burma, come remains of further early simiiforms, Pondaungia and Amphipithecus. These have been known since the 1920s, but it was only in the 1980s and '90s that further remains were discovered to confirm their simiiform status.

Oligocene (Oligocene Epoch)

      Information on primate evolution during the Oligocene Epoch (33.8 million to 23.8 million years ago) rests principally on discoveries in two areas—Texas and Egypt. The earliest platyrrhine fossils were found in South America and are only about 25 million years old, so much remains to be learned about their earliest evolutionary history.

      Of unusual interest is the recent discovery of the cranium of a North American omomyid called Rooneyia; it is of particular note in view of a belief that primates had disappeared from North America by late Eocene times. Rooneyia is also of considerable interest in itself. The skull possesses a mixture of primitive and advanced features, precisely the combination that might be anticipated in a transitional form between lower and higher primates.

      But by far the most important Oligocene site is Egypt. From the Fayum (al-Fayyūm (Fayyūm, Al-)) region of the Western Desert, from the Qasr El Sagha and Jebel Qatrani formations, has come the first evidence of the emerging Catarrhini. A number of different genera have been described from Fayum, including Catopithecus, Proteopithecus, Apidium, Qatrania, Propliopithecus, Oligopithecus, Parapithecus, and Aegyptopithecus. The first two of these, together with some other primates of uncertain affinities, are from the Sagha Formation, which, technically, is latest Eocene in age, but the deposits are continuous. Aegyptopithecus went on to give rise to living catarrhines (Old World monkeys and apes, whose ancestors did not separate until much later, about 25 million years ago). The Fayum seems to depict the cradle of the catarrhines and possibly of the New World monkeys too, since some authors consider the family Parapithecidae (containing Parapithecus, Apidium, and Qatrania) to be closer to the platyrrhines. The other genera represent structural common ancestors of the Catarrhini, which indicates that the catarrhines and platyrrhines had by now become separate, whereas the two modern groups of catarrhines (cercopithecoids and hominoids) had not. From the evidence provided by the Fayum primate fauna, it is evident that quadrupedalism was becoming established as the typical locomotor pattern and that vertical clinging and leaping, the characteristic gait of the Eocene forebears of the fauna, was no longer retained by the genera represented at this site.

Miocene (Miocene Epoch)

      The Miocene Epoch (23.8 million to 5.3 million years ago) is probably the most fruitful for paleoprimatology. During this time, dramatic changes in geomorphology, climate, and vegetation took place. The Miocene was a period of volcanism and mountain building, during which the topography of the modern world was becoming established. Of particular relevance to the story of primate evolution are the vegetational changes resulting from the formation of mountain ranges. Grasses, known only since the Early Tertiary Period (65 million to 1.8 million years ago), flourished in the new conditions and in many areas that had previously been forested. Grasslands are known regionally by such names as savanna, Llanos, and prairies. A new type of primate—the ground inhabitant—came into being during this period. The generalized nature of the bodily form of primates, combined with their specialized brain, made this critical step possible.

      In the last few decades, considerable additions to the knowledge of ape and human evolution have accrued from Miocene fossil beds in East Africa and Europe. In East Africa, as long ago as the 1930s, the excavations of the inshore islands and Kenyan shores of Lake Victoria by Louis Leakey (Leakey, Louis S.B.) and a number of colleagues began to illuminate knowledge of human and ape evolution. Renewed excavations at these sites, 17 million to 19 million years old, and exploration of new sites (one of them as much as 24 million years old) in northern Kenya have modified the older conclusions. The genus Proconsul is known from a nearly complete skeleton and several other postcranial bones, a large number of jaw and facial fragments, and several partial skulls—only one of them complete, and it had been distorted by pressure of the surrounding rocks during fossilization. Subsequent reconstruction reveals a skull more monkeylike than apelike in its contours; this, along with the forelimb skeleton, which is known in great detail for this species, indicates a body form that most closely resembles that of living monkeys. Leakey concluded that Proconsul diverged from the modern ape/human lineage before any of the living members of this group began to diverge from each other, and this led him to classify it in a separate family, Proconsulidae. Since the 1980s a number of other genera (Limnopithecus, Dendropithecus, Afropithecus, Kamoypithecus, and others) have been added to the family. The location of the actual ancestors of living hominoids remained mysterious until previously known specimens from Moroto Island, in Lake Victoria, were reexamined, and fresh material was discovered. In 1997 the description of a new genus and species, Morotopithecus bishopi, was announced, and this 20-million-year-old fossil is claimed to show the earliest traces of modern hominoid skeletal features. As, at the same time, traces of the earliest Old World monkeys are known, it appears that, while the Proconsulidae flourished with many genera and species, the hominoids (apes) and cercopithecoids (monkeys) were emerging and beginning to specialize. When, in the Middle Miocene, the proconsulids finally disappeared, it was the Old World monkeys that immediately diversified and took their place; the hominoids, until the rise of the human line, tended to remain mostly an inconspicuous group, remaining rather scarce in the fossil record. The separation of the gibbons (gibbon) (Hylobatidae) from the great ape/human stock (Hominidae) is at present not documented by fossils; indeed, whether there are any fossil gibbons known at all before the Pleistocene is still disputed.

      In Europe, an archaic family, Pliopithecidae, was widespread. Remains of the best-known genus, Pliopithecus, from the Czech Republic have provided a remarkably complete picture of the habits of this group, which, on this evidence, appears to have possessed bodily forms of a tailed quadruped retaining numerous characteristics of New World monkeys. Long considered to be ancestral gibbons, the pliopithecids are now known to be far removed from gibbons, or indeed any other living primates. Their ancestors diverged from primitive catarrhines before even the Proconsulidae became separate. Alongside them in Spain, France, and Hungary occur remains of Dryopithecus, which are now classified in the Hominidae; they are close to living human/ape ancestry and show further advances over Morotopithecus in the development of the skeletal features characterizing modern hominoids.

      In the Siwālik Hills (Siwalik Range) of northern India and Pakistan, remains of several species of the Middle–Late Miocene Sivapithecus have been known since the 1870s. It was long suspected that this genus was related to the living orangutan, and this hypothesis was splendidly corroborated in the 1970s with the discovery of the first facial skeleton, which exquisitely combines primitive hominid (Hominidae) features with derived orangutan-like states. If the orangutan lineage was now separate, it would be expected that ancestors of the human/gorilla/chimpanzee line would be found at contemporary sites farther west, and this turns out probably to be the case with the discoveries of two additional genera: the poorly known eight-million-year-old Samburupithecus, from northern Kenya, and the increasingly complete craniodental discoveries of Graecopithecus, from several sites of about the same age in Greece.

      One of the most famous of the Late Miocene fossils was the “abominable coalman,” so called because the best-preserved remains, a complete skeleton, were found during the 1950s in a lignite mine in northern Italy. Oreopithecus possessed a number of dental and bony characters that are typically hominid. The canines were relatively short and stout; the face was abbreviated; and the pelvis was broad and even showed characteristics associated with bipedal walking, as did the vertebral column. The arms were long (the intermembral index being well above 100) and the fingers long and curved. The limb proportions are those of a brachiator. An early argument was that it was a special human ancestor; reanalysis suggested that it might be an Old World monkey that had developed brachiating features convergently with gibbons; new studies have placed Oreopithecus firmly in the Hominidae, but, within this family, its exact position is still unclear. The human line is not thought to have separated from that of the chimpanzee by this period, yet the Oreopithecus pelvis undeniably shows biomechanical stress patterns expected of a partial biped. That the end of the Oreopithecus story has not yet been heard is certain. A final twist is that the sites at which it is found seem to have formed an isolated swampy region, probably an island, on which the (somewhat impoverished) fauna had been evolving in isolation for some considerable time, perhaps even a million years or more.

Pliocene (Pliocene Epoch)

      The Pliocene Epoch (5.3 million to 1.8 million years ago) was very similar to the present in terms of its geomorphology and climate. Discounting the effects of recent human influence on the distribution of forest and savanna in the tropics, the face of the land cannot have differed much from today. Thus, one would expect that, during the Pliocene (given the effectiveness of environmental selection), essentially modern forms of primates would have made their appearance. Yet no fossils referable to modern ape lineages are known during the Pliocene, and monkey families are scarcely better known. Libypithecus and Dolichopithecus, both monkeys, were probably ancestral colobines, but neither genus can be placed in a precise ancestral relationship with modern members of this subfamily. What did characterize the Pliocene was the rise in Africa of the human line, with Ardipithecus ramidus at 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia.

Pleistocene

      The Pleistocene Epoch (1,800,000 to 10,000 years ago) is the epoch of hominin (Hominidae) (protohuman) expansion. Knowledge of nonhuman primates, except for some selected Old World monkeys, is surprisingly sketchy. No ape fossils are known until relatively recent times, and monkeys have been identified in only a few regions in Africa and even fewer in Asia—e.g., Cercopithecoides, Paracolobus, and Rhinocolobus (members of the subfamily Colobinae) and Gorgopithecus and Dinopithecus (related to the living genus Papio), from South African deposits. Simopithecus, a giant ancestral forerunner, according to most authorities, of the present-day genus, Theropithecus (gelada), was unearthed from Olduvai Gorge and South Africa and was recently discovered also in India. It is possible that the Papio-Theropithecus divergence can be pushed well back into the Pliocene.

      One genus of the Pleistocene that is neither ape nor monkey in the sense that these taxa are interpreted today is Gigantopithecus. The romantic story of the discovery of the gargantuan molar teeth of Gigantopithecus blacki by the German-Dutch paleontologist G.H.R. von Koenigswald in a Chinese pharmacy has often been told. His boldness in erecting a new genus on such apparently slender grounds has been amply justified by the subsequent discovery of several massive jaws from Kwangsi in South China, which are apparently about a million years old, and by numerous teeth from caves in China and Vietnam. In one such cave (Tham Khuyen), Gigantopithecus and Homo teeth occur in the same deposits, dated as recently as 475,000 years ago. Furthermore, the discovery of an enormous jaw in the Dhok Pathan deposits of the Siwālik Hills (Siwalik Range) of India, from the earliest Pliocene, has provided a respectably long period of existence for this aberrant giant-toothed hominoid genus. Clearly, Gigantopithecus was a member of the Hominidae related to the orangutan, with divergent dental specializations that were possibly adaptive for foraging (feeding behaviour) in grassland where tree products were unavailable and ground products available but hard to get, which makes it an orangutan lineage that ran for a while in parallel with that of humans.

Classification

      Traditionally, the order Primates was divided into Prosimii (the primitive primates: lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers) and Anthropoidea (the bigger-brained monkeys and apes, including humans). It is now known that one of the “prosimians,” the tarsier, is actually more closely related to the “anthropoids,” so the classification of the primates has had to be revised. The two suborders recognized today are Strepsirrhini (lemurs and lorises) and Haplorrhini (tarsiers, monkeys, and apes, including humans). The present classification was adopted in the early 1970s, when the logic of phylogenetic (phylogeny) systematics was beginning to be appreciated, and the taxonomy of the order Primates was reorganized so as to make taxa equivalent, as far as possible, to clades. In this classification, the order is divided into the suborders Strepsirrhini and Haplorrhini, and these in turn are divided into infraorders.

      The two suborders differ in such features as the nose, eyes, and placenta. The muzzle of strepsirrhines is moist and bare, like a dog's; haplorrhines have a nose covered with downy hair. Strepsirrhines have a reflective layer, the tapetum lucidum, behind the retina, which increases the amount of light for night vision, while haplorrhines have no tapetum but, instead, an area of enhanced vision, the fovea. This difference is consistent, even though not all strepsirrhines are nocturnal or all haplorrhines diurnal. Finally, the uterine wall of haplorrhines is elaborated and vascularised each month for possible pregnancy, forming a hemochorial placenta (with intimate contact between maternal and fetal bloodstreams) if pregnancy occurs and requiring it to be shed, in menstruation, if there is no fertilization. Strepsirrhines have no uterine preparation, no menstruation, and a much-less-intimate epitheliochorial placenta. All indications are that these two suborders separated very early, perhaps 60 million years ago. The Strepsirrhini divide further into Lemuriformes (lemurlike) and Lorisiformes (lorislike) infraorders, while the Haplorrhini divide into Tarsiiformes (tarsiers) and Simiiformes (“anthropoids”—i.e., monkeys, apes, and humans). The Simiiformes divide in turn into Platyrrhini (New World monkeys) and Catarrhini (Old World monkeys and hominoids). A group of fossil mammals called the Paromomyiformes, known mainly from the Paleocene, have usually been classified as primates, but the eminent primate specialist Robert D. Martin has long argued that their connection with authenticated primates is tenuous, to say the least, and, in the 1990s, the paleontologist K.C. Beard discovered hand bones and other material that suggest strongly that some of these fossils may actually belong not to Primates but to the order Dermoptera.

      There has been a good deal of discussion about the relationships of primates to other mammals. In the 1930s it was proposed that the tree shrews (tree shrew) (small Southeast Asian mammals, family Tupaiidae), hitherto classed in the order Insectivora, belong to the order Primates—or at least that they are closely related. This has turned out to be wrong; Martin has shown in detail how they differ from Primates and how the error arose. Tree shrews are nowadays placed in their own order, Scandentia. In the 1980s the mammalogist Jack Pettigrew discovered that the Megachiroptera, the suborder of bats (order Chiroptera) that contains the fruit bats or “flying foxes” (family Pteropodidae (Old World fruit bat)), share aspects of the visual system with primates, and he proposed that they are in effect flying primates, having evolved wings independently from other bats (suborder Microchiroptera, the echolocating, mostly insectivorous smaller bats). Later he found that the colugos (flying lemur), so-called “flying lemurs” (sole living representatives of the order Dermoptera) of the Southeast Asian rainforests, share the same features. Molecular data, however, confirm that, whereas primates and colugos really are closely related, the bats form a monophyletic group. Therefore, either the primates, colugos, and all bats shared a common ancestor with those specializations of the visual system, which the Microchiroptera then lost, or these features were developed independently by (1) primates and colugos and (2) Megachiroptera. Molecular data are equivocal as to whether bats are the sister group to primates and colugos, so these two competing hypotheses cannot yet be tested.

      Like any classification, the present arrangement is essentially a hypothesis of relationships among superfamilies, families, and genera, and it is continually being tested by the discovery of new fossils, reanalyses of data from conventional sources, and analyses of new data such as DNA sequences. A new source of information has been the molecular clock; Morris Goodman, a molecular biologist who as long ago as 1963 (before the cladistic revolution) was already insisting that taxonomy should reflect phylogeny, recently proposed that an attempt be made to give the same taxonomic rank to groups of equivalent time depth (so reducing the subjectivity of higher categories), and his idea has begun to take hold in some quarters. In line with the arguments of such authorities as R.D. Martin and K.C. Beard, the (predominantly Paleocene) Plesiadapiformes (or Paromomyiformes) are not, here, regarded as Primates.

Order Primates (primate)

 About 300 species found predominantly in tropical regions, especially forests. Late Paleocene to present.

      Suborder Strepsirrhini (lemur)

 3 infraorders of 6 families. The 4 fossil families included here are the earliest-known acknowledged primates in the fossil family Petrolemuridae, the Eocene families Adapidae and Notharctidae, and the Eocene to Middle Miocene family Sivaladapidae.

      Infraorder Chiromyiformes

 1 family.

      Family Daubentoniidae (aye-ayes (aye-aye))

 1 genus, 2 species, one recently extinct, perhaps the past 500 years, from Madagascar. Holocene.

      Infraorder Lemuriformes (lemurs (lemur))

 

      Family Cheirogaleidae (dwarf, mouse, and fork-crowned lemurs)

 5 genera, 25 or more species from Madagascar. The number of species cannot be precisely given, as new species continue to be discovered. Holocene.

      Subfamily Cheirogaleinae (dwarf and mouse lemurs)

 

      Subfamily Phanerinae (fork-crowned lemurs)

 

      Family Lemuridae (“true” lemurs)

 5 genera, about 18 species from Madagascar. 1 Holocene fossil genus.

      Family Megaladapidae (sportive and koala lemurs)

 1 genus, at least 10 species from Madagascar. 1 Holocene fossil genus.

      Family Indridae (indris (indri), sifakas (sifaka), and avahis (avahi))

 3 genera and about 14 species from Madagascar. Holocene.

      Family Palaeopropithecidae (sloth lemurs)

 4 genera and 5 species from Madagascar, all extinct within the past 2,000 years. Holocene.

      Family Archaeolemuridae (baboon lemurs)

 2 recently extinct genera and 3 species from Madagascar, all extinct within the past 2,000 years. Holocene.

      Infraorder Lorisiformes

 2 families.

      Family Lorisidae

 4 or more genera, 11 or more species from Africa and Asia. 1 fossil genus. Miocene.

      Subfamily Lorisinae (lorises (loris))

 2 genera, about 8 Southeast Asian species.

      Subfamily Perodicticinae ( pottos and angwantibos)

 2 or more genera, 3 or more species from Africa.

      Family Galagidae (bush baby) (bush babies (bush baby), or galagos)

 4 genera of about 20 African species. 3 fossil genera. Miocene to Holocene.

Suborder Haplorrhini

 2 infraorders of 9 living families containing 41 living genera; 8 fossil families contain about 50 fossil genera dating to the Eocene.

      Infraorder Tarsiiformes

 1 living family; included here are the Eocene to Early Miocene families Anaptomorphidae and Omomyidae.

      Family Tarsiidae (tarsier) (tarsiers (tarsier))

 1 genus, about 7 Asian species. 2 fossil species from the Middle Eocene to Holocene.

      Infraorder Simiiformes

 8 living and 6 fossil families dating to the Early Miocene.

      Platyrrhini (New World monkeys (monkey))

 5 living families with more than 93 species. 1 fossil family of 7 Late Oligocene to Early Miocene genera (8 species) are not assignable to any of these families.

      Family Callitrichidae (marmoset) (marmosets (marmoset))

 4 genera, 27 or more species of South and Central America. 3 fossil species in 3 extinct genera dating from the Early Miocene to Holocene.

      Family Cebidae (capuchins (capuchin monkey) and squirrel monkeys (squirrel monkey))

 2 genera, about 10 species. South and Central America.

      Family Aotidae (durukulis (durukuli), or night monkeys)

 1 genus, 9 species. South and Central America.

      Family Pitheciidae (sakis (saki), uakaris (uakari), and titis (titi))

 4 genera, 29 or more South American species. 3 fossil species in 2 genera dating from the Middle Miocene to Holocene.

      Family Atelidae (spider (spider monkey), woolly (woolly monkey), woolly spider (woolly spider monkey), and howler monkeys (howler monkey))

 4 genera, about 19 species from South America north to Mexico. 3 fossil species in 2 genera dating from the Early Miocene to Holocene.

      Catarrhini (Old World monkeys and apes)

 3 living families, 5 fossil families dating from the Middle Eocene to Holocene. Included here are Victoriapithecidae, an Early Miocene family belonging to the Cercopithecoidea; Proconsulidae, an Early Miocene family belonging to the Hominoidea; and families Pliopithecidae (Early and Middle Miocene), Parapithecidae, and Propliopithecidae (Late Eocene and Early Oligocene), none of which can be placed in either Cercopithecoidea or Hominoidea. There are several Middle and Late Eocene genera that are not classifiable in any of these families.

      Superfamily Cercopithecoidea

 1 family with 21 genera.

      Family Cercopithecidae (Old World monkeys (monkey))

 2 subfamilies of 21 genera with 103 or more species, almost all from Asia and Africa. 17 fossil species in 11 genera dating from Middle Miocene to Holocene.

      Superfamily Hominoidea (ape) (apes (ape))

 2 families with 6 genera.

      Family Hylobatidae (gibbon) (gibbons (gibbon))

 4 genera, 14 species. 1 fossil of a different genus dating from the Pleistocene.

      Family Hominidae (great apes and humans (human being))

 4 genera, 7 African and Eurasian species until human expansion since the Late Pleistocene. 25 fossil species of 7 genera dating from the Pliocene.

      Subfamily Ponginae ( orangutans)

 1 genus, 1 species. Southeast Asia.

      Subfamily Homininae (African apes and humans)

 3 genera, 4 living species. Many zoologists divide subfamily Homininae into two “tribes”—Gorillini, containing the gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos and their extinct ancestors, and Hominini, containing the “hominins,” or humans (human being) and their extinct ancestors. Some place the chimpanzees and bonobos in their own tribe, Panini, because these two groups are more distant genetically from gorillas than they are from humans.

J.R. Napier Colin Peter Groves

Additional Reading

General works

Titles on specific primates follow the articles ape, baboon, bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla, and lemur.J.R. Napier and P.H. Napier, The Natural History of the Primates (1985, reissued 1994), provides a general overview of the order, with many photographs. Ronald M. Nowak, Walker's Primates of the World (1999), is concisely written and contains information on all aspects of primates at the genus level. Noel Rowe, The Pictorial Guide to the Living Primates (1996), describes the primates species by species and includes summary information and a colour photo of almost all of them. Monkey in the Mirror (1995), coproduced by WNET and the British Broadcasting Corporation as part of the television series Nature, compares humans with other primates. Barbara B. Smuts et al. (eds.), Primate Societies (1987), functions as a source book on primate social behaviour and ecology.

Advanced works

Colin Groves, Primate Taxonomy (2001), comprehensively reconstructs primate classification from the species level upward. Phyllis Dolhinow and Agustín Fuentes (eds.), The Nonhuman Primates (1999), is a collection of essays devoted largely to behavioral topics but covering all aspects of primatology, including conservation. John G. Fleagle, Primate Adaptation and Evolution, 2nd ed. (1999), provides separate chapters for current and paleontological information on major primate groups: prosimians, Old World monkeys, New World monkeys, and apes (including humans). Friderun Ankel-Simons, Primate Anatomy: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (2000), also includes coverage of taxonomy and molecular biology. Prudence Hero Napier and Paulina D. Jenkins, Catalogue of Primates in the British Museum (Natural History), 5 vols. (1976–90), the first three by Napier, the last two by Jenkins, are full treatments of the primates, with each volume covering a different taxonomic group.Colin Peter Groves

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