Showing newest posts with label Primates. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label Primates. Show older posts

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

How prosimians differ from other primates


How prosimians differ from other primates

Primates are an order that includes (1) monkeys, (2) apes, and even (3) humans. There are thirty-two diverse types of lemurs all which reside on the island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa. Primates can be placed into two suborders which are the anthropoids and prosimians. Monkeys, apes, and humans are categorized as anthropoids. Lemurs, however, fall into the prosimian category. World Wildlife International affirmed that lemurs are the most endangered primates in the world in the year 1987. The suborder prosimians also includes bushbabies (found in Africa), lorises (found in Asia), and tarsiers (found in Borneo and the Philippines).

The difference is that prosimians have damp noses and rely heavily on their smell to establish (1) what is harmless to consume food wise and (2) to discriminate amid other prosimians in their social groups which set them apart from Primates. But similarly, prosimians tidy themselves and others of their species like the primates. They utilize their teeth as a comb to groom one another. Females are the dominant sex within the prosimian species. Females get the first picks of brought back provisions from the males, they protect the rest of the group, and are also in charge of determining which male they will mate with! The first prosimian appears in fossil record about fifty-five million years, monkeys at about forty-five million years ago, and apes at about thirty-five million years ago. Only nocturnal prosimians are found off the islandMadagascar because there are no nocturnal monkeys or apes except one (the spider monkey) that is found in South America. of