Primates: Order Primates

What is a primate?

A primate is a member of the primates order. Humans are classified in the order along with lemurs, aye-ayes, lorisides, glagos, tarsiers, monkeys, apes and great apes. Most of these primates are found in tropical or subtropical climates.

Primates generally have large brains relative to other mammals. Many primates have well developed vision and some can see multiple colors. 

Many often talk about one distinct characteristics of primates being opposable thumbs. Oppasable thumbs mean that the thumb is able to rotate and move independently of the other four fingers on the hand and helps in grabbing and manipulating objects better. Opposable thumbs are one reason we humans have learned to make and handle tools better than other animals. For example, try to write something on a piece of paper without using your thumb. Hard, isn't it!?

But not all primates have fully opposable thumbs though. 

We can divide the primates into four groups just based on their thumbs.

1. Non-opposable thumbs are tarsiers and marmosets
2. Pseudo-opposable thumbs (kind of half way there) are members of the Strepsirrhines that include the lemurs, lorises, galagos. The second group of primates considered having pseudo-opposable thumbs are members of the family Cebidae, a family of monkeys found in Central and South America including caputchin and squirrel monkeys.
3. Fully opposable thumbs are the Great apes (Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) and Old World monkeys (Old World refers to animals native to Asia and Africa) such as baboons and Colobus mopnkeys.
4. A fourth group of monekys have opposable thumbs but with compaatively long thumbs. These are the gibbons, also referred to as lesser apes.