Sarah Gabriela Amaya

ANTH 1020
Professor Maughan
December 5, 2015
Primate Behavior and Ecology
The Homo sapiens, but as the people know, the humans like yourselves
have originated from primates through a long way of evolution from millions
of years ago, but now we are all so different that our category is now
considered a different species. Primates have many characteristics and
behaviors that led to what humans are today, from altruism, to how one
another coexist among different primates, and then how humans emerged
from primates different dietary habits thus creating a larger cranium capacity
to help them survive.
As far as scientists have been able to study primates from the
perspective of how their behavior affects them, focusing on the relationships
socially, to their environment and quite a bit of psychological traits and to an
ecological stand point (Jurmain et al. 2013). To truly understand them, then
we must comprehend the how social structure is all interrelated to other
variables that could influence the outcome of their evolution to primate
behavior. An approach called behavioral ecology based on an underlying
assumption that the interconnected animals, microorganisms, and plants all
evolved together during the same time frames, thus that the adaptions are
under environmental circumstances. Under the evolution of behavior there
are many subcategories like, the limits and the possible potentials for
learning new behaviors or the influence of the social structures.
Complex social structures such as primates, is it really possible that
they practice true altruism? Be completely self-less for others and get
nothing in return, even if that animal is put in danger to save others?
Okasha (2013) For instance, the Vervet monkeys will wail in an alarming

voice to warn others of their kind that there are predators nearby, when
doing so, it attracts the possible danger and thus lure the potential predator
to them, only increasing their chances of being attacked. At first glance, one
will wonder why one would do this. When biologically, all animals usually
look out for themselves and their own kin, but helping one another initially
lowered their personal risks of falling to natural selection, but together the
species stands tall. Altruism increases the chances as a species to survive
together and thus continuing to be Darwinian Fit in the course of natural
selection.
As far as sexual reproductive strategies, it ranges from many ratios:
one male and multi-female, multi-male and multi-female, multi-male and one
female, and on the rarest of occasions you have a lone male with great
territory or all male/female vice versa, not only that but the main goal is to
have as much offspring as one can possibly have (Jurmain et al 2011). All of
the social groupings are good ways to have a decent social structure like the
distribution of resources; there is a widespread of bugs and fruits all up in the
trees that are usually accessible to smaller groups of animals. Although with
such a structure there is bound to be competition to have land and resources
to food, not to mention the battle to have the most females, young alphas
could challenge the old and one or the other will prevail. Having the social
structures all vary and benefit the group for instance the structure of one
male multi-female, the male will have a large teste and mate with many
females, since he must be a rather large brute and have quite a bit of
territory, and all the females will care for their own young, since it is a long
time that they must care for them, until they reach adult hood.
With all the primates slowly evolving due to environmental changes,
their behavior changes too, soon the dietary habits will also slowly change to
eating meat. Primates who are usually folivory had encounters that
conditioned responses to specific stimuli to change their behavior; thus set
them on a different course to eat meat and a variety of things, rather than

just leaves and fruits. Doing so the body size increased, so did their brain
size and with their brain size was the cranial shape, not only making them
larger than the average primate at the time, but significantly smarter than
them. Evolution truly begins here and setting us on the course to modern
humans, for instances the Homo Habilis, a.k.a. the handy man was rather
good at hand tools, the first of their kind, an entire different species than
those before it. Still ape like but has more emerging features to that of an
average Homo sapien.

References
Jurmain, Robert, Lynn Kilgore, and Wenda Trevathan. "Chapter 7, Chapter 9."
Human Origins: Evolution and Diversity. Ninth ed. Mason: Cangage Learning,
2011. 431. Print.
Chapter 7 Primate Behavior, Chapter 9 The First Dispersal of the Genus
Homo: Homo Erectus and contemporaries.
Lambert, J. E. (2012) Primates in Communities: The Ecology of Competitive,
Predatory, Parasitic, and Mutualistic Interactions Between Primates and Other
Species. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):85
Okasha, Samir, "Biological Altruism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/altruism-biological/>.