Primates

"The Lion of the Season," from Mr. Punch's Victorian Era. As Charles Darwin was readying to release his treatise on evolution by natural selection (which was turned into an abstract rushed into press in 1859), Richard Owen was trying to separate humans from other primates. In 1857 he proposed that we belonged to our own distinct subclass, and it was peculiar structures in our brains that made all the difference. That our species were more cognitively developed than apes was clear, but did our supposed superiority stem from something anatomical, unique to us alone? Owen thought so, the…
A red ruffed lemur (Varecia rubra), photographed at the Bronx Zoo. [Like what you see here? Then vote for me in the 3rd Annual Blogging Scholarship contest!]
For over 300 years, our species has recognized the similarities between ourselves and other primates, particularly apes. For most of that time scholars in the West have attempted to keep our species cordoned off from our relatives, either through the static hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being or the possession of particular traits (from a hippocampus minor in the brain to a soul). Evolutionary theory, however, required researchers to look for similarities instead of stark differences. Which apes were our closest relatives? It has only been recently that the two living species of…
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
Geladas (Theropithecus gelada, females in the foreground, male in the background), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A juvenile Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
As soon as you have anything to do with the gorilla the fascination of studying him begins to grow on you and you instinctively begin to speak of the gorilla as "he" in a human sense, for he is obviously as well as scientifically akin to man. - Carl Akeley There are few places that I find as stimulating at the American Museum of Natural History, but the great halls of stuffed animals always put me in a somber mood. The organic parts of the reconstituted creatures were collected long ago, and large metal letters on the wooden frames telling the viewer who had donated the skins to the museum.…
A Wolf's guenon (Cercopithecus wolfi), photographed at the Bronx zoo.
A Coquerel's Sifaka (Propithecus coquereli), photographed at the Bronx zoo.
A Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx zoo.
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx zoo.
Ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta), photographed at the Philadelphia zoo.
Ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta), photographed at the Philadelphia Zoo.
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
Western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.