simiiformes
what better way to relax after fourteen hours at the office than by watching a david attenborough double-feature? i've always loved learning about primates, but last night taught me some things i hadn't known before:
i. emperor tamarins live in small family units headed by a female. she has two or more males living with her, who all take part in raising the set of twins she gives birth to. the strangest part was that although they're vocal animals, the sign she gives when she wants the guys to take over parenting duties so that she can go eat is just to sit there with her tongue sticking out. even cuter is that they're eager to help out... but the babies don't like being handed over to their dads! also, can anyone think of any other primates that are polyandrous?
ii. i already knew that there were monkeys that cooperated with mongoose when looking out for predators. i even knew that they had different sounds for different predators (as an eagle, a cougar, and a snake all require different reactions). what i didn't know was that it's actually about five to seven different species of monkey that actually travel together through the forest with the mongoose, each species occupying a different level of the canopy. furthermore, they ALL have different calls for each predator, and understand the differences in each other's warnings. that kind of blows my mind. multilingual monkeys!
iii. apparently, one of the newest theories about how we came to walk on two legs (previous theories being to free up our hands and to see farther) is that 3.5 million years ago the climate where our ancestors lived changed, and became very waterlogged, so we had to learn to wade through water, which was less stressful to our hips and allowed for them to evolve in a way that encouraged bipedalism. all primates seem to walk on two legs for short distances, though, and it's one of the eeriest things to witness.
i. emperor tamarins live in small family units headed by a female. she has two or more males living with her, who all take part in raising the set of twins she gives birth to. the strangest part was that although they're vocal animals, the sign she gives when she wants the guys to take over parenting duties so that she can go eat is just to sit there with her tongue sticking out. even cuter is that they're eager to help out... but the babies don't like being handed over to their dads! also, can anyone think of any other primates that are polyandrous?
ii. i already knew that there were monkeys that cooperated with mongoose when looking out for predators. i even knew that they had different sounds for different predators (as an eagle, a cougar, and a snake all require different reactions). what i didn't know was that it's actually about five to seven different species of monkey that actually travel together through the forest with the mongoose, each species occupying a different level of the canopy. furthermore, they ALL have different calls for each predator, and understand the differences in each other's warnings. that kind of blows my mind. multilingual monkeys!
iii. apparently, one of the newest theories about how we came to walk on two legs (previous theories being to free up our hands and to see farther) is that 3.5 million years ago the climate where our ancestors lived changed, and became very waterlogged, so we had to learn to wade through water, which was less stressful to our hips and allowed for them to evolve in a way that encouraged bipedalism. all primates seem to walk on two legs for short distances, though, and it's one of the eeriest things to witness.