Comparing Primates

Lemurs :

Lemurs live in the tropical rain forests of Madagascar. They use their hands and legs to climb trees. Their locomotor pattern is found in their legs, which is used for leaping. Lemurs find it hard to travel through ground by walking, so a good majority hop from place to place. This trait has been influenced by their environments and was carried on from ancestors of lemurs and since they found walking trough land very difficult.

Spider Monkeys: 

The spider monkeys live in tropical rain forests of Central/South America. Their locomotor trait is their long arms and gripping tails which help them move from branch to branch (brachiating). Since they travel by tree so often, it's unnecessary for Spider-Monkeys to use their thumbs often because of their gripping tail. The lack of thumbs is a result of adaption to the environment. These traits show that the adaption to the environment had an important influence on the species.

Baboons: 

Baboons live in Africa/Arabia and live in a savannah like region. They are the largest monkeys and do not have tails. These animals do not have gripping tails, but they are able proceed up trees to rest. Their locomotor trait is quadruple walking, or walking on all fours. They are very adaptable to a majority of environments because of their locomotive trait. The baboon travels by foot most of the time; this being influenced by the savannas and which is why they do not need to swing from tree to tree often.

Gibbon:

Gibbons are found in South-East Asia. They live in the trees and swing to each tree which gives them great shoulder strength and long arms. Long arms resulted in the adaption to the environment of locomotion of swinging from branch to branch, or called  brachiating. 

They adapt to living in trees because of their long arms which enables them better to live in the trees. Its traits have been influenced by environmental adaption because since they are on trees so often, their fingers are curved to give a strong grip which helps them swing well.

Chimpanzee:

Chimpanzees are located in Central/South Africa and are the closest related to the humans. The chimpanzee lives in the forest, rainforest and savanna. They have a dense body and have no tail. Chimpanzees locomotor patterns is known to move on all fours both on ground and in the trees.  Chimps often use their knuckles to support when they walk, which gives them the name "knuckle-walker." This locomotor pattern is primarily due to the fact that chimpanzees arm length is longer than their legs, which makes them walk on the soles of their feet and the knuckles on their hands.from tree to tree. 

Summary:  Due to locomotor traits, the environment each one of these primates are located in both physical and movement traits. Primates that tend to live in the savannah regions which cover more ground forms the primate to walk on all fours, leaving them with longer front arms and short back legs. This adaptation causes these primates to be much faster on ground, and not as agile as in trees. While primates that live in the rainforest often have tails and long arms to help support them as they swing from branch to branch. These locomotor traits are all caused on locations each of these primates are set in. A question that occurred to me as I started this blog post was: If environment is such a big impact on each primates locomotor pattern, would they be able to adapt if they're put in a different environment? And if they do adapt, how would their physical traits come to appear?