Primatology

Primatology is the study of nonhuman primates (NHP) or, as sometimes identified, the alloprimates, meaning primates other than us. The order Primates includes the prosimians, Old and New World monkeys, apes, and humans. The study of humans is relegated to the social sciences (that is, anthropology, geography, psychology, and sociology) and, although humans are primates, the study of humans is not included as part of primatology. Primatology, in contrast, is generally viewed as part of the life sciences. Nonhuman primates have been studied by psychologists, zoologists, and biological anthropologists in both the laboratory and in their natural habitats. In general, biological anthropologists study NHP under semi-natural conditions or in their natural habitat.

Primates are eutherian (that is, placental) mammals having, for example, hair, mammary glands for nursing their offspring, a physiology for maintaining a constant body temperature, and different types of teeth identified as incisors, canines, premolars, and molars. The traits unique to primates include an increase in brain size and a lengthening of all stages of the life cycle, stereoscopic vision with the eyes encircled by bones, color vision, sensitive ridged pads with nails at the end of the digits instead of the typical mammalian claws, opposable digits, and hands and feet in place of paws. Primates also have a generalized skeleton and variable locomotor patterns and feeding postures.

The prosimians belong to the suborder Prosimii that includes the lemurs, sifakas, indris, and aye-ayes of Madagascar, the galagos of Africa, the loris of Africa and Asia, and the tarsier of Asia. Prosimians have more retained (that is, primitive mammal-like traits) than the other suborder of primates, the Anthropoidea. These retained traits of the prosimians include a rhinarium or wet-nose, some claws, eyes not completely enclosed in bone, smaller brain size, and less control of individual fingers than seen in the anthropoid primates. The anthropoid primates, the monkeys, apes, and humans, lack the wet-nose, and have eyes completely encased in bone, relatively large brains, and nails on all of their digits. Some primatologists, particularly those who study early primate evolution, prefer to divide the order Primates into two suborders designated as the Strepsirhini, the wetnosed prosimians, and the dry-nosed Haplorhini, which includes the tarsier, New and Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.

Primatology began in the 1800s as mainly a study of primate anatomy and an attempt to understand where primates, including humans, fall within the classification system constructed by Linnaeus in the mid-1750s. The first attempts to send researchers into the field to observe NHP in their natural habitat was initiated in the early 1930s by psychologist Robert Yerkes who sent N. W. Nissen and H. C. Bingham to observe chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), respectively. Another psychologist supported by Yerkes was Clarence R. Carpenter who studied howler monkeys (genus Alouatta) and spider monkeys (genus Ateles) on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal and arranged for 500 Indian rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to be moved to Cayo Santiago, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Carpenter was also part of the 1937Asian research project to study gibbons (genus Hylobates) initiated by Harold Coolidge, Jr. Sherwood L. Washburn, who would play a major role in the development of primatology following WWII, was also part of the Coolidge expedition.

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