My topic is diet across the five primates.
Lemurs live exclusively on the island of Madagascar, a
lush, tropical environment which provides significant vegetation. Being
herbivores, the Lemurs diet is primarily fruits and leaves. Without competition
from the large continent of Africa, the Lemurs had very little competition for
the native vegetation and very little reason to evolve. The Spider Monkeys live mainly in Asia, the
Middle East and Northern Africa regions. The Spider Monkeys are
omnivores like lemurs but, aside from eating fruits and leaves, eat roots,
nuts, birds’ eggs and insects. The environment of the Spider Monkey creates
competition for food such that their prehensile tails and semi-brachiator
shoulders and arms developed in order for them to gather more food and escape
predators more quickly. Baboons, an old world monkey species, ceropithecines, are
found in Africa. Baboons have developed
cheek pouches in order to store more food. Baboons are omnivores and tend to
eat fruit, but meat is also on their menu. Large and aggressive males may even
eat birds and occasionally baby chimpanzees. Gibbons, subfamily Hylobatidae, are
terrestrial, not arboreal, and live in Southeast Asia. Gibbons rarely leave the
tree tops to forage for fruit and leaves. Gibbons are brachiators, able to
swing from branch to branch, with a hand-over-hand motion and have one of the
greater arm-spans of the primates. They will, occasionally, walk upright across
branches. Chimpanzees thrive in tropical forests as easily as in the Savannas
of Africa. Chimpanzees have evolved closest to humans. Chimpanzees’ diet, like
these other primates is primarily vegetarian. Males, more aggressive by nature,
are more likely to eat meat than females. Chimpanzees do not pass along hunting
skills to their offspring, and therefore, diet remains herbivore in nature.
Lemur
Spider
Monkey 
Baboon
Siamang Gibbon Chimpanzee
In summary, the environment is of key importance to the evolution of primates diet. While they basically remained herbivores, due to competition for the same vegetation, with other animals and species within their own families, they did evolve to use the digits on their hands and the advantage of their tails to evolve. Where they live and who they must compete with for those same food sources affects how their diets evolved. Equally, the impact of the environment on the evolution of their physical traits, (i.e., bodies, tails, hands, teeth, ) coincides with the strength of their species.
ReplyDeleteMake sure you check your post after you publish to make sure images posted correctly since I don’t see them and can’t link to them. You need to save the images you want to your computer and then upload them into your post using the “image’ function in blogger. I also recommend that you change font color to make it easier for your readers to see the print. Breaking the post into paragraphs would also help.
ReplyDeleteRe: Lemurs: But we are talking about the adaptations they are currently exhibiting, adapted to their current environment. They may not have had to change much since their initial habitation of the environment, but they certainly developed their current adaptations in response to their environment. That should have been part of the discussion. Did they arrive on the island already adapted the existing available food or did they have to adapt to it over time?
Re: Spider Monkeys: I agree that some of those physical adaptations may have helped with food acquisition, but the key here is how did their environment lead to their dietary adaptations? How does the environment influence what they eat?
Good mention on the cheek pouches of baboons as these are clearly an adaptation in direct response to limited food resources. Can limited resources also explain their more diverse diet, compared with lemurs and spider monkeys?
Gibbons are actually highly arboreal, meaning they live in the trees. Can you clarify the connection between their environment and their diet?
I agree that meat is not a large portion of chimpanzee diets. What sources say that males eat more meat than females? Actually, hunting and foraging skills are learned traits, so they are passed on from generation to generation. Chimpanzees teach their young to collect termites using sticks created for that purpose. Again, a learned trait. Chimpanzee diets are very diverse. A more thorough discussion would have been appropriate.
Your summary is noted in your comments. You can always go back in and edit a post to add in additional information before it is due. With regard to content, you did a better job of connecting environment to diet, particularly with discussing issues of competition for those resources.