Question

3. Choose five primate characteristics. Include at least one characteristic relating to brain/senses, one relating to skeletal adaptation and one behavior/life history characteristic in your total of five. Describe the evolutionary advantage of each characteristic for primate survival.

Answer 1

A primate is a eutherian mammal.

Five primate characteristics are:

1)The brain size is larger, with a reduction in the olfactory region of the brain as compared to mammals.The areas of the brain dealing with stereoscopic vision and eye-hand co-ordination are particularly large compared to other mammals.

2) They have a shortened snout because primates rely more on sense of vision than on sense of smell.It is an adaptation since the primates are more dependent n. a good vision to judge their next step rather than their olfactory senses , unlike other mammals.

3)They have stereoscopic vision for better depth perception, as it helps them judge how far the next tree or branch is in forest dwelling primates.Example:The stereoscopic vision helps them to perceive the distance between two branches frm where the mammal is , without it , the nearer branch and the branch that is farther away , both would look flat on a plane.

4)Primates live a longer period of infancy, childhood and adulthood, because longer life means better growth especially growth of the brain.Primates are born with brains that still need to develop a bit after birth.Primates need to learn a lot of skills regarding survival and food gathering from their mothers and other social groups.

5)Primates have well developed shoulder joints and hip joints to help them move more effectively.