The Human Eyes Of Primates

“In their natural homes in the wild, chimpanzees humans’ closest living genetic relatives”, who are more like us than they’re like gorillas are never separated from their families and troops . “Profoundly social beings, they spend every day together exploring, crafting and using tools to solve problems, foraging, playing, grooming each other, and making soft nests for sleeping each night” . They care deeply for their families and forge lifelong friendships . Chimpanzee mothers are loving and protective, nursing their infants and sharing their nests with them for four to six years . They have excellent memories and share cultural traditions with their children and peers . They empathize with one another and console their friends when they’re upset . They help others, even at a personal cost to themselves . When one of another

A few weeks ago, I spent a lovely Monday afternoon observing two different primates at the Santa Ana Zoo. I got to the zoo around two in the afternoon, and to my surprise, the zoo was decently crowded. The Santa Ana Zoo is smaller in comparison to other zoos like the Los Angeles Zoo, but still had a decent amount of animals there. Covering a small 20 acres of land, I came across two primates that fit perfectly for the purposes of this course project. I chose to observe an endangered ape, the white-handed gibbon, and an endangered new world monkey, the golden-headed lion tamarin.

Natural Selection is one of the most interesting aspects that developed by the process and is given to the environmental primates. The evolutionary process is for the survival of the fittest,it has proteins that travel from the DNA. The changes focus on life of the primates and are responsible for the phenotype that makes each one of us different than the rest. Since humans are primates, humans and apes have been said to share a lot of similarities. In chapter six, it talked about traits from non human primates to characteristics. More efficient, greater dependence of flexible learned behavior. Other than humans,primates consist of lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes. Primate social behavior is understanding the concepts distinguished

Primates are one of the most interesting mammals on earth, not only because of their complex social structures, but because they hold so many similar characteristics to humans. Primates are often cited as our closest living relatives and on two separate occasions I observed four separate species of primates at the San Diego Zoo that can justify their use of their physical characteristics and behaviors that may be similar as well as different to the other primates and ours.

With only two hundred and fifty to three hundred left, the critically endangered Cross River Gorilla roams the African forests while on the brink of extinction (Save Our Species). Africa has many populations of primates that are at the least endangered, and the Cross River Gorilla is the closest to extinction and the least studied due to the rarity of observing them. (Save Our Species). These gorillas are confined to small, mountainous areas that have been separated over and over again by fragmentation, furthermore ruining the needed social aspect of the groups and need for vast land (Imong, I., & Robbins, M.), (Save Our Species) The increased hunting and fragmentation of these Gorilla’s habitats has caused a large problem with how the

Within this essay, we will study more in depth the behavioral as well as physical traits of two primates at a zoo from their interaction with their peers to their place in the group. This observation would enable us to further understand the possible existing correlation between humans and primates. First, I studied a female chimpanzee with her baby, and then, a dominant male gorilla, in San Francisco Zoo at about noon, on May 23, 2015, for an hour each. Even though they share some similarities such as having a large brain, living for a long time, and being bored in their enclosure, they are still different; when gorillas are the largest, chimpanzees are the smartest. In fact, chimps use tools to catch food, they would not be able to reach

For this assignment, I have decided to design an enclosure about the primate, Mandrill. I will, in words, describe an enclosure that will prevent these nonhuman primates from not being suited to their natural habitat needs. Throughout this assignment, I will design my very own version of a perfect enclosure that secures these primates by critically thinking of any psychological or physical problems that can occur. What also will need to partake is considering the perspective of the nonhuman primates, the zookeepers, and the visitors as well. Designing an enclosure has to be precise and detailed. I will do the best I can to be as detailed as I can be when designing this enclosure.

One has probably heard the simile, “you must be blind as a bat!” Well in fact, this statement is false, bats are not blind. Formally known in the mammal family as Chiroptera, bats can be split into two sub orders known as mega-bats (flying foxes or fruit bats) and micro-bats. Typically, when bats are thought of it is commonly known to have the characteristics of having echolocation, or sonar vision, to aid detection of objects in complete darkness. As illustrated in Figure 1, echolocation is the use of sound waves made by the contraction of the larynx, these waves are then reflected back from the moving object to signal the bat.

Primate intelligence correlates to primate cognition which is the study of the intellectual and behavioral skills of primates (Low). In the book Human Evolution and Culture, chapter five "Human Evolution Biological and Culture" states that primates share a lot of common features with mammals but what makes them uniquely different than many other mammals is that primates have a wide range of physical and social traits (86). The social relationships of primates are unique because just like humans, they relationship begin with the mother and other adults that the younger dependable primates. "The dependency of infant primates offers an evolutionary benefit that allows infant primates more time to examine and master the intricate behaviors necessary to survival while enjoying the care and protection of mature adults."(87) Primates have the privilege of having a large brain the size similar to body size to learn the culture and the way of life they live. Larger brains give primates the advantage to obtain an enormous amount of learning and integrate data. Primates have a special gift in areas of their brain that's dedicated to speech and language. (94) Primates have the special ability to communicate with each other as well as with humans and are the "only habitual toolmaking animal" (96). Although primates are more cognitively advanced than many other animals/mammals, researchers and critics still debate on how to define, compare and study intelligence and the growth of

They are very fast and can be able to run within short distances using the most minimal time. It takes less than 10 seconds to run within a distance of approximately 100 meters. While the animals move around they try to monitor the environment as quadrupedally and monitoring of the environment can be able to take as much as up to ten minutes in any case they have doubts of where they are, this alerts them of any predators. Consortship is a situation where the two animals would stay close to each other and monitor the movement and environment of each other. This is done as long as the animals are out in an environment that is not seen as being friendly. The patas can be seen to be less vocal and they move around in silence, they make certain noise only once when they have seen a predator. The noise or the sound takes just a few seconds as long as the danger is taken away

Chimpanzees (Figure 1) are the closest living relatives to us, and they share 99 percent of our DNA (1). Chimpanzees have distinct group territoriality. Male chimpanzees “patrol” near the boundary between the two ranges, at that time they move very carefully and quietly, and they can cease to listen and observe the range of their neighbors. Patrolling individuals are likely to face cruel and violent

Through this assignment, we will see how primates express their behaviors and understand the meaning behind them. For my observation, it will be based on the orangutans, which is classified in the genus Pongo. The San Diego zoo itself is set up with a lot of ropes, balls, hammocks, rocks and more for the animal to interact with in the grassy area. There are many levels of ground elevations that allowed the primate to have maximum space to explore around and live in. After seeing how the specie interacts and behaves, I can relate it to human behaviors and how we gain our roots from them. One of the small orangutans I observed was very active and kept climbing on different levels of the ropes and interacted with many other of the inhabitants.

Joseph Henrich began, A Puzzling Primate, by describing how physically inept human beings are when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. He continues with this logic when he demonstrates, that humans in this era, would not be able to survive if placed in the wild forest environment. Due to the biological weakness of humans, culture became a necessary defense mechanism and a form of protection. Culture became a unique way for humans to adapt. Despite the obvious physical weakness of humans, through culture we have rose to be the dominant species.

Due to the higher degree of intelligence, different types of primates engage in different complex social groups. The three main ways to group primate societies are monogamous, polygynous and multi male multi female groups.

In evolutionary terms colour and the way it is perceived is an important aspect. Sumner and Mollon (2000a) conducted research looking into the photopigments and the detection of targets. They found that the L/M subsystem provides an advantage for the detection of fruits and leaves. This led them to their conclusion that finding these foods may have been an essential selective advantage in the original development and maintenance of primate trichromacy, and thus the process of colour perception can be beneficial to primates. Despite having the same visual system, the research is problematic as it was conducted on animals, and thus the findings may not be the same when applying it to the human concept of colour vision. Further support towards the evolutionary basis of colour perception comes from Bompas, Kendall and Sumner (2013) who found that normal trichromats made faster responses and fewer errors than their colour deficient competitors. This shows that colour is an important aspect and both of these research findings combined suggest enhanced survival due to the way in which colour is