Comparative Primate Blog Post

 Lemurs  are a clade of strepsirrhine primates endemic to the island of Madagascar. lemurs merely share morphological and behavioral traits with basal primates. Madagascar is known to have so many different environments and frequent changes of seasons. Different types of lemurs have evolved unique combinations of unusual traits to cope with Madagascar's harsh, seasonal climate. These traits can include seasonal fat storage, hypometabolism (including torpor and hibernation), small group sizes, low encephalization (relative brain size), cathemerality (activity both day and night), and strict breeding seasons. Since the lemur was found all over Madagascar and with different adaptation, they had different sizes; some were large and some were small. Extreme resource limitations and seasonal breeding are also thought to have given rise to three other relatively common lemur traits: female social dominance, sexual monomorphism, and male–male competition for mates involving low levels of agonism, such as sperm competition. Since the Madagascar is large in size with different environments across this huge island, lemurs were able to live through out the island with their adaptation skills, making them have around 100 different lemur species.

 Spider monkeys of the genus Ateles are New World monkeys in the subfamily Atelinae, family Atelidae. Like other Atelines, they are found in tropical forests of Central and South America, from southern Mexico to Brazil. The disproportionately long limbs and long prehensile tail makes them one of the largest New World monkeys and gives rise to their common name. Spider monkeys live in the upper layers of the rainforest and forage in the high canopy but sometimes avoid high canopy of the trees because the thin branch cannot support them. Due to their large size, spider monkeys require large tracts of moist evergreen forests and prefer undisturbed primary rainforest. Also the interesting fact about spider monekys, females rather than males disperse at puberty to join new groups. Males tend to stick together for their whole life. Hence males in a group are more likely to be related and have closer bonds than females. The strongest social bonds are formed between females and their young offspring.

 Baboons are African and Arabian Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio. There are five species, which are known to be one of the largest non-hominid members of the primate. In all baboon species there is pronounced sexual dimorphism, usually in size but also sometimes in colour or canine development. Males of the Hamadryas Baboon species also have a large white mane. The Baboons were known to become more aggressive day after day and I believe they are becoming aggressive because the fact that their mentality is set to survival mode, just to try to feed their babies and themselves. The environmnet in Africa and Arabian might be hard to find foods so they would do whatever it takes to get the food and feed the babies.

 Gibbons are apes in the family Hylobatidae also called the lesser apes, gibbons differ from great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and humans) in being smaller, exhibiting low sexual dimorphism, in not making nests, and in certain anatomical details in which they superficially more closely resemble monkeys than great apes do. Gibbons occur in tropical and subtropical rainforests from northeast India to Indonesia and north to southern China, including the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java. Depending on species and gender, gibbons' fur coloration varies from dark to light brown shades, and anywhere in between black and white. It is rare to see a completely white gibbon. Many gibbons are hard to identify based on fur coloration and are identified either by song or genetics. These morphological ambiguities have led to hybrids in zoos. Zoos often receive gibbons of unknown origin and therefore rely on morphological variation or labels that are impossible to verify to assign species and subspecies names, so it is common for separate species of gibbons to be misidentified and housed together. Because China being large with different environments all over the countries, it is unknown for the people where some of the gibbons are from and how they got that traits.

 Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our genetic blueprint. Humans and chimps are also thought to share a common ancestor who lived some four to eight million years ago. Chimpanzees live in social communities of several dozen animals, and can habituate themselves to African rain forests, woodlands, and grasslands. The male common chimp is up to 1.7 metres (5.6 ft) high when standing, and weighs as much as 70 kilograms (150 lb); the female is somewhat smaller. The common chimp’s long arms, when extended, have a span one and a half times as long as the body’s height and a chimpanzee's arms are longer than its legs. They are known to walk on four legs but sometimes they can walk with two legs just like humans. Chimpanzees live in large multi-male and multi-female social groups called communities. Being alike to humans, their communities are similar as humans; they have leaders who leads the group.

 Studying and researching about these primates, I kind of understood the influence of environment to these primates. Sexual dimophism most of the times results from sexual selection. Using spider mokey as an example, the sizes of these primates matter from which environment they are living because as I said in the research, because of their large size, spider monkeys require large tracts of moist evergreen forests and prefer undisturbed primary rainforest. I did not know the environments are so important to all these primates and how they can adapt to survive. This research assignment was very interesting to do.