Comparitive Primates

There are two suborder of primates; the Strepsirhini, which include lemurs and lorises, and the Haplorhini, which include tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans. All of these primates have many similarities and differences. In my post I will be focusing of the locomotor patterns that these primates exhibit.

       Lemurs live on the island of Madagascar and off the east coast of Africa. There is a lot of variation that lemurs show in their locomotor patterns. The picture showed here is of a ring-tailed lemur which happen to be terrestrial. There are a great deal more of arboreal lemurs given to the many high trees in Madagascar. This means that most lemurs prefer to be in the trees and travel that way. Even within the arboreal lemur family though there is some variation as to how they climb. Some are quadrupeds while others are vertical clingers and leapers. Quadrupeds use all four of their limbs to support their body weight while moving. Vertical clingers and leapers also use all four of their limbs but they use them to support their body weight vertically.The lemurs are the only non human primates on Madagascar, therefore they had no competition. This created a very unique set of primates.

        The spider monkey is a New World monkey. They mostly live in forested environments through southern Mexico and Central and South America. Because this is a mostly arboreal environment most of these monkeys live in the trees and some never touch the ground. The spider monkey is what they call a "semibrachiator". This means that this monkey uses both swinging by its arms and leaping to move about the forest. They also have a "prehensile tail" that they use as a kind of fifth arm. you can see this in the picture to the right. Due to the arboreal environment that they live in, these monkeys have adapted to live in the trees and use their limbs to help them. The spider monkey has even adapted to use its long tail to help him move.

     The Baboon is an Old World monkey. These monkeys are extremely spread out in the types of environments they live in. Baboons are part of the cercopithecines subfamily and are mainly found in Africa. The Baboon is a terrestrial monkey that only goes to the tress at night. They are quadrupedal so they walk on all four limbs. They lack a tail so they are very different from the spider monkey in their locomotor patterns. Given that the baboon does not spend a great deal of time in the trees it is understandable that they have adapted to their environment and are quadrupedal instead of using brachiation.

    Gibbons and Siamangs are considered the lesser apes because they are the smallest of the apes. They live in Southeast Asia along with the Orangutans. Gibbons travel almost exclusively using Brachiation. They use their arms to swing them from branch to branch. They are one of the only primates to excel at this form of travel. As you can see in the picture to the right, they have much longer arms. This helps them in their swinging ability. Their arms are so much longer in fact that when they do walk on the ground they need to walk bipedally. These apes have adapted and evolved to use their arms in the most beneficial way possible, which led to their extremely long arms.

 Chimpanzees, and Gorillas, are considered the great apes. The chimpanzees are found in equatorial Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Lake Tanganyika. Given their wide range of environments the chimpanzee walks quadrupedally but also occasionally climbs trees. Young chimpanzees have been known to brachiate on occasion. They are known as knuckle walkers as well as the gorillas given that when they walk on all four limbs they walk on their knuckles. Chimpanzees have also been known to walk bipedally if they are walking short distances while holding something.  They are built very similar to that of gorillas except that they have adapted in different ways. They spend more time in the trees and have adapted and evolved accordingly as you can see by their difference in locomotor patterns.