One of the first things I noticed are that certain types of primates, like apes do not have a tail. When people often think of primates, there is often a tail associated and knowing that one type of primates does not have a tail is even more of a clue to think about how closely related us humans are to primates. We also have a tailbone, which is a place where a tail could fit, and the mere fact that we have tail bones is more evidence to lead one to the conclusion that we are closely related to primates. Other features of primates include their vision; being able to see in color and having binocular stereoscopic vision (overlapping fields of vision and brain receiving information from both sides). Human’s vision and brain patterns are known to be very specialized and advanced, and knowing that primates are able to see the very same way that we can further suggests the link. The k-selection pattern in primates is unique; they tend to be more reliant on caregivers than a lot of other mammals, and I would say even many humans. The idea of having a few offspring and raising them with such nurturing and care is an idea that is very foreign to many species, except humans and primates. The way in which we both invest our time into a few offspring to instill certain behaviors and skills into them is unique.
The article that really surprised me this week was about the war among chimpanzees that occurred. Even though I know how closely related primates are to humans, I often think of them as not having the intelligible capability in order to divide up and intentionally attack another group of primates. Reading this sort of article leads myself and others to formulate ideas about where violence may have originate from when it comes to humans. Many associate primates with violence in many ways, but never as organized as one would consider war. The connection and reasoning humans put behind the same idea of war seems to make a little more sense when knowing certain primates, our closest ancestors, can organize such a thing as well. Reading an article as such leads me to believe that the best way to continue research into understanding ourselves is to look at the intelligence and behavior patterns of primates. Scientists have studied the actual phenotype characteristics of primates long enough to strongly suggest the link between them and us, but I think that behavior and intelligence are the true indicator and would convince many others the link between human and primates. Reading about the mere instance that chimpanzees were capable of constructing a planned attack on another chimpanzee of another group was enough to convince myself more of the genetic link between humans and primates. Observing and experimenting on certain primates to see if certain intelligence can be learned throughout their lifetime would be a great marker in figuring out why humans might or might not gain certain levels of intelligence throughout their lifetime. Expanding on that, observing the development and the reasoning of why certain primates create and keep certain groups throughout their life, might help suggest why humans create different groups, keep and grow some groups, while letting others diminish, along with why we might behave differently to certain groups and how those groups may affect our behaviors on a daily basis.
I really liked your post, especially the very beginning. Since I study language, the parts of anatomy I mostly focus on are mouths, teeth, tongues, throats, vocal chords—that kind of thing. I get so narrowly focused on them (they really are quite interesting in humans compared to apes and the number of noises we’re able to produce compared to them is pretty shocking) that I tend to overlook other interesting physiological traits. I appreciate that you brought up tails because I had never even thought about how humans and our closest primate relatives don’t have tails, but tailbones. It makes me imagine how that evolution happened, perhaps as we stopped living so much in trees? I really enjoyed reading so thanks for sharing this post!
I also found that article very surprising and interesting. I did not realize that other primates were capable of organizing war between different groups like we do. I have always thought and assumed that war was such a complex and highly intellectual process that we as humans have engaged in. I never really thought about other primates participating in the same process in such an intelligent and calculated manner. I agree that in future research we can learn a lot from these other primates. We share so many biological and behavioural traits so learning more about how we have evolved will help us understand the differences we still see. I think there is so much to learn about ourselves from looking at these other primates and in turn we might be able to determine how their own evolution might one day continue to surpass their limitations like we have. It was a really good post!