PRIMATES: HISTORY, TAXONOMY, CHARACTERISTICS, BEHAVIOR

PRIMATES

The order of primates includes 15 families, 77 genera and approximately 280 species and 626 taxa (species and subspecies) that have lived in the past 5000 years. Two of the families and 11 genera are extinct. There are two main genuses of primate: 1) prosimians (lemurs, lorises and galagos); and 2) anthropoids (monkeys, apes and humans). Tarsiers, another kind of primate, are most closely related to prosimians but also have anthropoid features. The largest primates are mountain gorillas. The smallest are mouse lemurs, that weigh only 24 to 38 grams. The largest primate ever was a Pleistocene ape that lived in China and Vietnam and weighed 300 kilograms.

Most primates live in tropical or subtropical areas and can be found in all tropical and subtropical areas of the world except Australia and New Guinea. They eat a wide variety food and display a wide variety of behaviors and are regarded as one of the most diverse mammal groups.

In Asia, there are around 75 species of primate in 13 genera. The number of species is comparable to that of Africa even though Africa has a much larger area inhabitable for primates. The reason for this is that southern Asia has many islands, isolated peninsulas and regions divided by mountains that allow isolated populations to become different species.

However the number of species found in a particular community is relatively small. It is not exactly clear why this is the case. Some scientists have arged that this because of the high number of non-fruiting dipterocarp tress. About 34 percent of the primates in Asia are regarded as threatened or endangered.

Websites and Resources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; BBC Earth bbcearth.com; A-Z-Animals.com a-z-animals.com; Live Science Animals livescience.com; Animal Info animalinfo.org ; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org the world’s largest independent conservation body; National Geographic National Geographic ; Endangered Animals (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) iucnredlist.org

News: “Primate Conservation “is a newsletter first published in 1981; “Asian Primates” is a newsletter first published in 1991.

Hominidae (Hominids) — the Great Apes and Humans

Primates is the name of an order. Primates are sometimes conveniently divided into the following major groups (which are either suborders of families) : 1) strepsirrhines (lemurs, galagos, and lorisids); 2) Tarsiiformes (tarsiers); 3) Catarrhini (Old World monkeys); 4) Simiiformes (New World monkeys); 5) Hominoidea (gibbons); 6) Hominidae (great apes and humans). [Source: Wikipedia]

Hominidae (Hominids) is a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: 1) Pongo (Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutans); 2) Gorilla (the eastern and western gorillas); 3) Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos); and 4) Homo, of which only modern humans (Homo sapiens) remain.

Phil Myers wrote in Animal Diversity Web: Until recently, most classifications included only humans in this family; other apes were put in the family Pongidae (from which the gibbons were sometimes separated as the Hylobatidae). The evidence linking humans to gorillas and chimps has grown dramatically in past decades, especially with increased use of molecular techniques. It now appears that chimps, gorillas, and humans form a clade of closely related species; orangutans are slightly less close phylogenetically, and gibbons are a more distant branch. [Source: Phil Myers, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Hominids range in weight from 48 kilograms to 270 kilograms. Males are larger than females. Hominids are the largest primates, with robust bodies and well-developed forearms. Their thumb and big toe are opposable except in humans, who have lost opposability of the big toe. All digits have flattened nails. No hominid has a tail, and none has ischial callosities. Numerous skeletal differences between hominids and other primates are related to their upright or semi-upright stance. /=\

All members of this family have large braincase. Most have a prominent face and prognathous jaw; again, humans are exceptional. All are catarrhine, with nostrils close together and facing forward and downward. The dental formula is the same for all members of the group: 2/2, 1/1, 2/2, 3/3 = 32. Hominids have broad incisors and their canines are never developed into tusks. The upper molars are quadrate and bunodont; the lowers are bunodont and possess a hypoconulid. The uppers lack lophs connecting labial and lingual cusps and thus, in contrast to cercopithecid (Old World monkey)s (Old World monkeys), are not bilophodont. /=\

Hominids are omnivorous (eating a mixed and varied diet), primarily frugivorous (fruit eating) or folivorous (leaf-eating). All but humans are good climbers, but only the orangutan is really arboreal. Members of this family are well-known for the complexity of their social behavior. Facial expression and complex vocalizations play an important role in the behavior of hominids. All make and use nests. Hominids generally give birth to a single young, and the period of parental care is extended.

Primate History

Scientists believe that primates developed in arboreal habitats, and many of the characteristics they have today probably arose as adaptations for life in the trees or are primitive traits that were retained for the same reason. Several species, including our own, have left the trees for life on the ground; nevertheless, we retain many of these features. [Source:Phil Myers, Animal Diversity Web (ADW)]

The oldest primate fossils date to around 55 million years ago. There is circumstantial evidence based on mathematics and probability that they lived as far back as 80 million years which would have made them contemporaries of the dinosaurs. Ancient prosimians (the group that includes lemurs and lorises) are believed to have originated in the Northern Hemisphere (North America or Europe) 65 million years ago. Promisians appeared in the fossil record in both the Old World (Europe and Asia) and the New World (the Americas) about 55 million years ago. Many of the traits they developed — sterosciopic vision, grasping hands, large brains and superior muscular coordination and dexterity — grew out of the fact they lived in trees.

Gigantopithecus

It was long thought that anthropoids appeared in Africa about 35 million years, presumably evolving from prosimians. Now there is evidence that anthropoid lineage is as old as the prosimian one and both may have arisen as long as 60 million years ago. It is widely believed to that at around this time primates divided onto two major lineages: one that led to anthropoids and the other that led to modern prosimians. The first anthropoids were a diverse group, with around 40 genera.

Some paleontologists now argue that anthropoids arose in Asia, not Africa. The oldest known anthropoid fossils from Africa were found in Algeria and the Fayum oasis area of Egypt. They date to between 50 million and 37 million years ago and were smaller creatures, in many cases smaller than their prosimian relatives. A 60-million -year-old fossil found in Morocco may be an anthropoid but the conclusion is in dispute. The oldest known anthropoid fossils from Asia were found in Burma (Myanmar). They date to around 37 million years ago and are more monkey-like. [Source: Russel L. Ciochon and Gregg F. Gunnell, Natural History magazine , March 2006]

Gigantopithecus — the Giant Ape of China

The largest primate ever was a Pleistocene ape that lived in southern China and Vietnam and had inch-wide teeth and is thought to have subsisted, like pandas, mainly on bamboo. A gigantic ape, standing over three meters (10 feet) tall and weighing up to 545 kilograms (1,200 pounds) lived roughly 2 million years ago to 300,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and China. This animal, Gigantopithecus blackii, was the largest primate ever. It may have co-existed with early homo species but unlikely lived at the same time modern men (homo sapiens).

Gigantopitjecus may lived as recently as 100,000 years ago, a time when humans were also thought to have inhabited the region. Jack Rink, a Canadian palaeontologist from McMaster University who is studying the creature, told the Times of London, “Probably the creature lived in the caves and fed in bamboo forests, while people were living lower in river valleys. It is quite likely that humans came face to face with the ape.”

Primate Characteristics

Primates have relatively large brains for their size but other animals have this same feature and there is nothing particularly extraordinary about it. What is extraordinary is the fetal brain of primates is so much larger than other mammals. As a rule the larger the brain, the larger the frontal cortex, the part of the brain used by humans for reasoning and higher thought, and the lager the frontal cortex the more intelligent an animal is. Studies have shown that among primates the larger the brain the more intelligent the primate is. Other mammals such as dogs, cats and lions do not have particularly large brains.

Primates are usually recognized on the basis of primitive characteristics of the skull, teeth, and limbs such as: 1) shortened rostrum (hard, beak-like structures projecting out from the head or mouth); 2) forwardly directed eye orbits in the skull, associated with stereoscopic vision; 3) relatively large braincase; 4) opposable big toe and thumb; 5) the separate and well-developed radius and ulna in the forearm and tibia and fibula in the hindleg; 6) pentadactyl feet (feet with five toes); 7) the presence of a clavicle (collar-bone). Other characteristics, which are not necessarily unique to primates include: 7) first toe with a nail, while other digits bear either nails or claws; and 8) a simple stomach. [Source: Phil Myers, Animal Diversity Web (ADW)]

Evolution of primates and their ancestors

According to Animal Diversity Web: The teeth of primates vary considerably. The dental formula for the order is 0-2/1-2, 0-1/0-1, 2-4/2-4, 2-3/2-3 = 18-36. The incisors are especially variable. In some forms, most incisors have been lost, although all retain at least 1 lower incisor. In others, the incisors are intermediate in size and appear to function as pincers or nippers, as they commonly do in other groups of mammals. In some, including most strepsirrhines (see next paragraph), the lower incisors form a toothcomb used in grooming and perhaps foraging. In the aye-aye (Daubentoniidae), the incisors are reduced to 1 in each jaw and are rodent-like in form and function. Canines are usually (but not always) present; they vary in size, including within species between males and females. Premolars are usually bicuspid (bilophodont), but sometimes canine-like or molar-like. Molars have 3-5 cusps, commonly 4. A hypocone was added early in primate history, and the paraconid was lost, leaving both upper and lower teeth with a basically quadrate pattern. Primitively, primate molars were brachydont and tuberculosectorial, but they have become bunodont and quadrate in a number of modern forms. [Source: Phil Myers, Animal Diversity Web (ADW)]

Primates Suborders and Families

Most primate species live in the tropics or subtropics, although a few, most notably humans, also inhabit temperate regions. Except for a few terrestrial species, primates tend to be arboreal. Some species eat leaves or fruit; others are insectivorous or carnivorous. [Source: Phil Myers, Animal Diversity Web (ADW)]

Anderson and Jones (1984) formally divided living primates into two suborders — the Strepsirrhini and the Haplorrhini. Many scientists place humans and their close relatives, the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutans in the family Hominidae.

According to Animal Diversity Web: Strepsirrhines have naked noses, lower incisors forming a toothcomb (a group of teeth with fine spaces between them), and no plate separating orbit from temporal fossa (shallow, depressed area on a bone). The second digit on the hind foot of many strepsirrhines is modified to form a " toilet claw" used in grooming. Strepsirrhines include mostly arboreal species with many primitive characteristics, but at the same time, some extreme specializations for particular modes of life.

Suborder Strepsirrhini
Family Lemuridae (lemurs)
Family Cheirogaleidae (dwarf and mouse lemurs)
Family Indriidae (medium- to large-sized lemurs, with only four teeth in the toothcomb instead of the usual six)
Family Daubentoniidae (aye-aye)
Family Galagonidae (galagos)
Family Lorisidae (lorises)
Family Lepilemuridae (sportive lemurs)

Suborder Haplorrhini
Family Tarsiidae (tarsiers)
Family Cebidae (New World monkeys, including capuchin and squirrel monkeys)
Family Cercopithecidae (Old World monkeys)
Family Callitrichinae (marmosets And tamarins)
Family Hylobatidae (gibbons)
Family Hominidae (Apes)

Haplorrhines are the so-called "higher" primates, an anthropocentric designation if ever there was one. They have furry noses and a plate separating orbit from temporal fossa and they lack a toothcomb. Haplorrhines include many more species, are more widely distributed, and in most areas play a more important ecological role.

Haplorrhines are further divided into two major groups, the Platyrrhini and the Catarrhini. Platyrrhines have flat noses, outwardly directed nasal openings, three premolars in upper and lower jaws, anterior upper molars with three or four major cusps, and are found only in the New World. Catarrhines have paired downwardly directed nasal openings, which are close together; usually two premolars in each jaw, anterior upper molars with four cusps, and are found only in the Old World (Cercopithecoidea, Hominoidea).

Primate Locomotion

Primates employ five major types of locomotion: 1) arboreal quadrupedalism 2) terrestrial quadrupedalism; 3) leaping; 4) hanging and 5) bipedalism.

Arboreal quadrupedalism (using all four limbs in the trees) involves walking, running and bounding in trees, and using a long tail for balance. It is associated with guenons macaques, colobus monkeys, capuchin monkeys, marmosets, tarmarins and bearded sakis. These primates typically have relatively short, flexed limbs of equal length, a narrow thorax, grasping feet, and long fingers and toes.

Terrestrial quadrupedalism (using all four limbs on the ground) is associated with baboons and some macaques. The tail of these primates is reduced in size and their limbs are built mainly for running. The toes and fingers are relatively short. Some of these animals walk on their hind legs for short periods. Bipedalism (standing upright and using two legs for walking) is associated only with humans.

Many primates are excellent leapers. Among the features that make this possible are long, springy hind legs, pelvic bones modified for propulsion, and hands, feet and sometimes tails that are excellent for grabbing branches.

Primate Senses

Compared to other mammals, primates have a relatively small olfactory region of the brain associated with smelling and gathering information from smell. Conversely the cerebrum (especially the cerebral cortex) of primates is relatively large. His part of the brain is correlated with an increasing reliance on sight and increasingly complex social behavior.[Source: Phil Myers, Animal Diversity Web (ADW)]

Primates have color vision. In March 2006, Reuters reported: “Primates may have evolved color vision not to find the ripest, tastiest fruit but rather to detect that telltale blush on someone else's rump, a team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., reported. The cone structures in the eye that help detect color seem exquisitely tuned to skin tones. "For a hundred years, we've thought that color vision was for finding the right fruit to eat when it was ripe," said Mark Changizi, a neurobiologist and postdoctoral researcher at Caltech who led the study. Instead, Changizi and colleagues report in the current issue of the journal Biology Letters, the system seems adapted especially to find the colors prevalent in primate skins, notably changes due to how much oxygenated hemoglobin is in the blood. [Source: Reuters, March 3, 2006]

The three-cone system can help a primate detect if a potential partner is having a rush of emotion in anticipation of mating and if an enemy's blood has drained out of his face due to fear. "Also ... when you're more oxygenated, you're in better shape," Changizi said. That may be why humans value rosy cheeks, he said. The clincher: Changizi said old-world primates that have the three-cone vision are also all bare-faced and bare-butted. "There's no sense in being able to see the slight color variations in skin if you can't see the skin," Changizi said. "This could connect up with why we're the 'naked ape.' "

Primate Social Behavior

Primates are largely social animals that live in groups and form long term social relationships. Social behavior and group structure can vary depending on the species, group size and even individual population. Things like food supply, the presence of humans, mating dynamics and topography can also have a profound affect on behavior and social organization. Most solitary primates tend to be small and nocturnal.

Some scientists break down primates into two broad categories: 1) “one-male” groups, which revolve around a group in which mating is polygynous and the group is dominated by a single male: and 2) “multi-male/ multi-female” groups, which often contain subgroups and features two important variations: a) fission-fusion societies; and b) harems (effectively one male subgroups).

“One male” systems are characterized by strong competition for females with often violent takeover battles for leadership of the group followed by infanticide and mating by the new male to ensure the females bave offsping related to him not his rival.

Many groups are dominated by females rather than males. Most primate societies in Africa and Asia are made up groups consisting of females that spend their whole lives with a group and males that leave the group they born into around puberty and live on their own or find a new group, which gradually accepts them over time.

Primate Communication

Primates have a highly diversified communications systems: involving auditory/vocal, tactile, chemical and visual systems. Urine and feces ate important in olfactory communication in a number of species. Touching is very important for many species and often manifests itself in the form of grooming.

Vocalizations seem to be particularly important to forest-dwelling and nocturnal monkeys. The calls are usually associated with territory but also have other uses. Alarm calls have been found that identify different predators.

The question of whether the fear of snakes is learned or inherited was tested with a series of studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1980s with laboratory-raised monkeys and wild monkeys. The lab-raised monkeys who had never seen a snake showed no fear when they were exposed to one. However, if they watched wild monkeys — both on video and live — show fear of snakes they quickly adopted the same fear. Evidence that the fear of snake is hardwired into the brain was confirmed by a series of tests in which the lab-raised monkeys were shown a manipulated video of wild monkeys expressing fear of flowers, After watching the video the lab-raised monkey developed no fear of flowers themselves.

Primate Breeding and Offspring-Rearing

Primates are slow breeders. They produce few offspring, their gestation periods are relatively long and their offspring take a long time to mature. Most have only one offspring. Those that don’t have two or three.Young primates are born relatively helpless and develop relatively slowly. They are often carried around by their mothers for a considerable period of time. Play is an important activity among youngsters in developing social and survival skills. Primate females like orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas that raise their offspring live up to 42 percent longer than males. Primate males, such as titis and owl monkeys, that raise their offspring live 15 percent longer than females.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica:The placenta, the defining characteristic of all eutherian mammals, is a vascular structure that permits physiological interchange of blood and body fluids between the mother and the fetus and the breakdown products of the fetal metabolism. The placenta is a flat, discoid-shaped “cake” in humans, some of the other monkeys and apes, and the tarsiers. In many monkeys, it is bidiscoidal, having two linked portions. The placenta is intimately attached on its outer surface to the endometrium, the lining of the uterus, by fingerlike processes (villi) that embed themselves in the endometrium, where complete vascular connections between the two circulations are achieved. [Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

The connection between fetal and maternal circulations appears as two distinct types among primates, a distinction that is believed to have had an important effect on the evolution of the order. In the first type (epitheliochorial), found in the lemurs and lorises, several cellular layers separate the maternal and fetal bloodstreams and thus limit the passage of molecules of serum proteins. In the second type (hemochorial), found in tarsiers, monkeys, and apes, the relationship is much more intimate, there being no cell layers separating the two circulations so that serum proteins can easily pass. Among tarsiers, monkeys and apes, the endometrium becomes highly vascularised about two weeks after ovulation, in preparation for the possible implantation of a zygote; if this does not occur, it is shed via menstruation. The placenta is shed at birth in all primates and, except rarely among humans, is eaten by the mother.

Primate Human-Like Behavior

Darwin noted in his 1872 treatise, “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” that “very many kinds of monkeys, when pleased, utter a reiterated sound, clearly analogous to laughter.”

Monkeys deprived of social companionship develop life-threatening neurosis. Research monkeys forced to live alone in cages often sit in the cages and stare listlessly into space and behave like autistic children.

Researchers from Atlanta’s Emory University have found that monkeys are aware of inequality and injustice. The researchers taught brown capuchin monkeys to receive “tokens” as rewards and trade them for food. They found that the members of the group got along well when cucumbers were the form of trade of food but discovered that monkeys would get jealous when more desirable grapes were given. If one animal received a grape for doing nothing the others were incensed.

Primates and Humans

A number of primates are endangered and some are close to extinction. Loss of habitat due to deforestation and encroachment by human population have posed the greatest threat. Hunting and capturing primate is also a problem. Sometimes they are killed as pests.

In many developing countries where monkeys live, monkeys are killed for bush meat. Body parts from monkeys are also used as medicines, aphrodisiac ornaments, trophies and bait. Unfortunately some of the most endangered species are also the ones who also valued for the taste of their meat or their aphrodisiac qualities,

Primates are widely used in laboratory experiments, especially is the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry. Some of experiments are quite cruel. Often the animals are kept in very inhumane conditions.

Primates have been given a lot of exposure in National Geographic and BBC documentaries and the work of Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey. Have helped to dispel many myth about the great apes and create an affection for them and other primates.

A number of laws and polices have been established to protect primates. But in places where the most harm is being done, these are difficult to enforce.

Over Half of World's Wild Primate Species Face Extinction, Report Says

More than half of the world’s apes, monkeys, lemurs and lorises are now threatened with extinction as agriculture and industrial activities destroy forest habitats and the animals’ populations are hit by hunting and trade according to a reported prepared in part by Conservation International. Ian Sample wrote in The Guardian: In the most bleak assessment of primates to date, conservationists found that 60 percent of the wild species are on course to die out, with three quarters already in steady decline. The report casts doubt on the future of about 300 primate species, including gorillas, chimps, gibbons, marmosets, tarsiers, lemurs and lorises. [Source: Ian Sample, The Guardian, January 18, 2017]

Anthony Rylands, a senior research scientist at Conservation International who helped to compile the report, said he was “horrified” at the grim picture revealed in the review which drew on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, peer-reviewed science reports and UN databases. “The scale of this is massive,” Rylands told the Guardian. “Considering the large number of species currently threatened and experiencing population declines, the world will soon be facing a major extinction event if effective action is not implemented immediately,” he writes in the journal Science Advances, with colleagues at the University of Illinois and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The most dramatic impact on primates has come from agricultural growth. From 1990 to 2010 it has claimed 1.5 million square kilo meters of primate habitats, an area three times the size of France. In Sumatra and Borneo, the destruction of forests for oil palm plantations has driven severe declines in orangutan populations. In China, the expansion of rubber plantations has led to the near extinction of the northern white-cheeked crested gibbon and the Hainan gibbon, of which only about 30 or animals survive. More rubber plantations in India have hit the Bengal slow loris, the western hoolock gibbon and Phayre’s leaf monkey.

Primates are spread throughout 90 countries, but two thirds of the species live in just four: Brazil, Madagascar, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In Madagascar, 87 percent of primate species face extinction, along with 73 percent in Asia, the report states. It adds that humans have “one last opportunity” to reduce or remove the threats facing the animals, to build conservation efforts, and raise worldwide awareness of their predicament.

The market for tropical timber has driven up industrial logging and damaged forest areas in Asia, Africa and the neotropics. Mining for minerals and diamonds have also taken a toll. On Dinagat island in the Philippines, gold, nickel and copper mining endanger the Philippine tarsier. In the DRC, hunters working around the tin, gold and diamond mine industry are the greatest threat to the region’s Grauer’s gorilla. The industries at work in tropical forest areas are expected to be served by an extra 25m km of roads by 2050, further fragmenting the primates’ habitats.

While some species are resilient and adapt to the loss of traditional habitats, survival in patches of forest and urban areas is unlikely to be sustainable, the authors write. One of the more unusual threats facing lemurs and chimps who come into contact with humans is infection with diarrhoea-causing bugs.

Another major force driving primates to extinction is commercialised bushmeat hunting, which has expanded to provide food to the growing human population. The report cites accounts that claim 150,000 primates from 16 species are traded each year in Nigeria and Cameroon. In Borneo, between 2,000 and 3,000 orangutans are killed for food each year, a rate that is far from sustainable.

Russell Mittermeier, another Conservation International scientist and co-author of the study, said that it was crucial to target conservation on the most threatened forests and species. “Clearly we need to deal with the drivers of extinction, from commercial agriculture to mining and logging. But if we focus all of our efforts on that, by the time we have had an impact, there won’t be anything left. So we must first protect the last remaining pieces of habitat and if no protected areas exist, we must create them. “I’m an optimist and I believe we can come up with solutions, but we have to be very targeted now to make sure we don’t lose anything,” he said. Writing in the journal, the authors add: “Despite the impending extinction facing many of the world’s primates, we remain adamant that primate conservation is not yet a lost cause.”

Primates Species Particularly in Danger of Extinction

poacher with baby orangutan

Among the 25 primate species singled out as most endangered in a 2007 report by the International Primatological Society said. are the Miss Waldron's red colobus of Ivory Coast and Ghana, the Golden-headed langur of Vietnam and China's Hainan gibbon, whose numbers have dwindled to 17. The Horton Plains slender loris of Sri Lanka has been sighted just four times since 1937. [Source: ap, October 25, 2007]

As of 2007, 114 of the world's 394 primate species are classified as threatened with extinction by the World Conservation Union or IUCN. The 25 most endangered primates include 11 from Asia, seven from Africa, four from Madagascar and three from South and Central America. The list includes well-known primates like the Sumatran orangutan of Indonesia and the Cross River gorilla of Cameroon and Nigeria as well as lesser known species such as the Greater bamboo lemur from Madagascar.

Six species are on the biannual report for the first time in 2007, including a recently discovered Indonesian tarsier that has yet to be formally named and the Kipunji from Tanzania, which was discovered in 2003. "Some of the new species we discover are endangered from the get go because they are living in restricted areas," Mittermeier said. "If you find a news species and it's living in an area heavily impacted by habitat destruction and hunting, you recognize it's in trouble."

Four primates species on the list from Vietnam have been "decimated" by hunting for their meat and bones, according to Barney Long, a conservation biologist based in Vietnam for WWF Greater Mekong Program. "All four species are close to extinction," Long said, of Delacour's langur, Golden-headed langur, Grey-shanked douc and Tonkin snub-nosed monkey. "The key populations have been stabilized. But there needs to be a lot more law enforcement and work to persuade local communities to support conservation for those numbers to increase."

But the news, the report says, is not all bad. Nine primates from the last report in 2004 were taken off mostly because of bolstered conservation efforts to save their populations. Among them are the Eastern gorilla from Africa, the Black-faced lion tamarin and the Buffy-headed tufted capuchin from Brazil and the Perrier's sifaka from Madagascar.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated December 2024