Primates: classification, ecology and behaviour

Primatology is comparative anatomy plus behaviour — humans sit on the same continuum, not on a separate planet.

• St. George Mivart (1873): unguiculate, claviculate, placental mammals with bony orbits, three tooth kinds in a lifetime, a developed brain with posterior lobe and calcarine fissure — the classical definition still taught.
• Locomotion set: arboreal quadrupedalism, leaping, true brachiation (gibbons, siamangs), semi-brachiation, knuckle-walking, human bipedalism.
• Pheromones and scent still matter in less ‘visual’ strepsirrhines (lemurs); rhesus olfactory cues are a lab example.

• Body size and BMR: small animals need rich food; large ones can live on leaves.
• Scattered food → small groups; abundant food and predation → larger groups.
• Nocturnal → small groups; diurnal → often larger.
• Dominance: alpha roles are learned and challenged, not a permanent crown. Affiliation (grooming) and altruism (Goodall’s care and adoption notes) glue groups.
• Dispersal: usually males; bonobos and some New World monkeys females; howlers/colobus both — inbreeding avoidance is the functional line.

• Washoe: American Sign Language, about 132 signs, taught Loulis — symbols are not a human monopoly at a simple level.
• Sue Savage-Rumbaugh / Kanzi: lexigrams, comprehension beyond production.
• Humans uniquely stack symbols into open syntax and teach them as culture at scale — a quantitative gap, not a magical essence.
• Conservation: primatology feeds habitat arguments; analogy from living apes reconstructs early hominin possibilities, not certainties.