Primate

:For the ecclesiastical use of this term, see primate (religion)

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• 13, See classification

A primate is any member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains all lemurs, monkeys, apes, and humans. The English singular primate is a back-formation from the Latin name Primates, which itself was the plural of the Latin primas ("one of the first, excellent, noble"). Colin Groves lists about 350 species of primates in Primate Taxonomy.

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All primates have five fingers (pentadactyly), a generalized dental pattern, and a primitive (unspecialized) body plan. Another distinguishing feature of primates is fingernails. Opposing thumbs are also a characteristic primate feature, but are not limited to this order; opossums, for example, also have opposing thumbs. In primates, the combination of opposing thumbs, short fingernails (rather than claws) and long, inward-closing fingers is a relic of the ancestral practice of brachiating through trees. Forward-facing color binocular vision was also useful for the brachiating ancestors of humans, particularly for finding and collecting food. All primates, even those that lack the features typical of other primates (like lorises), share eye orbit characteristics that distinguish them from other taxonomic orders.

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Primate: Relative sizes ►



 

Order: Order (from Latin ordo "row, rank, series, arrangement", Old French ordre from the Latin accusative, ordinem, attested in English from the 1220s). The word conveys a notion of "a system of parts subject to certain uniform, established ranks or proportions", an idea very central to scholastic thoug...

Monkey: A monkey is any member of two of the three groupings of simian primates. These two groupings are the New World and Old World monkeys of which together there are nearly 200 species. Because of their similarity to monkeys, apes such as chimpanzees and gibbons are sometimes incorrectly called monkeys. ...

Latin: Latin is an Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The ...




Primate related Images and Photos (experimental)

Aye-Aye 4 Month Old Infant on Branch Duke University Primate Center

Hand-Reared Aye-Aye in Container Looking Around Duke University Primate Center