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14 Works 200 Membros 2 Críticas

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Includes the name: J. R. Napier

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Obras por John Russell Napier

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Conhecimento Comum

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Interesting and worthwhile, as my other two primate books are badly out of date. (Of course, this book is out of date itself, especially as regards fossil primates; one of the ironies of paleontology is that new fossil mammals are discovered at a much greater rate than new living ones).


An ecology professor once told me that most of the mammalian biomass in the rainforest is in primates and bats. Seems reasonable, although I’d like a better count of rodents and insectivores. Primates tend to be difficult to study in the wild; the famous work has all be done on ground-dwelling forms (chimps, gorillas, baboons, vervets); it’s difficult to imagine a Dian Fossey or Jane Goodall pursuing a troop of Colobus through the trees. Thus the autecology of a lot of the arboreal species is very poorly known. Diets are surprisingly diverse; although there are no true carnivorous forms, chimps and baboons will eat meat enthusiastically if given the opportunity (which, ironically, generally consists of other primates; vervet monkeys have a special alarm call for “baboon” as opposed to “snake”, “eagle”, or “leopard”). Other species specialize on fruit, leaves, grass, insects, and so on (some of the leaf-eating forms have developed “double” stomachs and the necessary gut flora to process cellulose) but almost all will take other food if the opportunity presents. Humans have some of the least specialized dentition of any primate; almost all other primates, even totally vegetarian forms, have proportionately larger canines than people.


Reproductive habits are equally diverse; single male/multiple females; free-for-all in the breeding season; monogamy; and just about every other combination attested. Pygmy chimps (bonobos; they’re not actually that much smaller than regular chimps) practice an almost human variety of male/male, male/female and female/female sexual contacts; a couple other species engage in male homosexuality as a dominance behavior. In a few species the females have a greatly enlarged clitoris; these haven’t been studied enough to see if this gets used in inter- or intra-sex dominance behavior as it is in hyenas.


A very common behavioral theme is deference to infants and young. In many species, infants have unique markings (a white tail tuft in chimps and gorillas) or even totally different fur color (baby Presbytis obscura, a langur, are a beautiful apricot yellow in contrast to the grayish brown adults), and adults will tolerate behavior from infants that would evoke violence in adults or juveniles. The grasping reflex that allows infants to cling to their mother’s fur (in a couple of species, their father’s fur) in highly instinctive; authors John and Prudence Napier report that human infants have a grasping reflex in the first few days after birth that’s strong enough to allow suspending the newborns by their hands (it apparently declines rapidly). One of my acquaintances has just given birth; I’ll have to ask if I can borrow the baby for a few science experiments. Interestingly, prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers, etc.) generally “park” their babies in a nest somewhere until they’re old enough to move on their own; if they have to be carried the mother grabs them by the nape of the neck like a mother cat carries kittens, and they display the same “relaxed” posture kittens show in this condition.


Many primates display dramatic facial skin and fur color, presumably to aid in conveying facial expressions. I was particularly interested in the number of species that have the equivalent of “eye liner” and “eye shadow”, especially in blue; I wonder if the popularity of eye makeup is some sort of atavistic holdover from the Oligocene? I’ll have to try wearing eye shadow and recording other primates’ reactions. There’s a similar intensification of fur and skin color at the other end; although it’s more prominent in females in estrus, it occurs in both sexes; there are a number of species where the males have bright blue genitals. The authors suggest distinct species coloration patterns help to avoid “wasting” courtship and mating efforts on members of the wrong species; I certainly hate it when that happens.


Primates imitative powers are the stuff of proverb; I was especially interested in the research colony of Japanese macaques, who learned to wash sweet potatoes to remove dirt; then discovered that potatoes washed in salt water were more flavorful than potatoes washed in fresh water; then found that it was easy to separate rice from sand if you threw it into the ocean and allowed the sand to sink and the rice to float; then learned to swim. In all cases it was very young members of the colony that “invented” the techniques, which were then imitated by others; the oldest members never picked up on things at all, but presumably just sat around complaining about the way kids act today.


A few random notes: only New World monkeys (and not all of them) have prehensile tails; when they do, the tails have “fingerprints” that are as unique as those on the digits. Ring-tailed lemurs engage in “stink fights”; the males anoint their tails with glandular secretions, then wave them at other males in dominance fights; seems silly, but beats chest-thumping or napalm bombing, I suppose. There’s a Madagascar prosimian called an “Indri”; “indri” turns out to mean “There it is!” in Malagasy. Almost all primates have two mammae, which was originally one of the distinctive features of the group and resulted in them being combined with bats in early classification schemes; however, a couple of prosimian species have four mammae.


Primates have never been one of my favorite groups; just a little too similar and dissimilar at the same time, perhaps? The primate house at the zoo never appealed to me due to the chance of flung effluvia, and I can’t hear the phrase “good grooming” without thinking of baboons searching through each other’s fur looking for lice and fleas to eat. Napier and Napier go some ways toward removing that prejudice.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
setnahkt | Dec 27, 2017 |
 
Assinalado
AnomalyArchive | Aug 11, 2018 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
14
Membros
200
Popularidade
#110,008
Avaliação
½ 2.5
Críticas
2
ISBN
27
Línguas
1

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