comparitive primate blog post

Lemurs spend most of their time in the trees. They can be found in the island of Madagascar and the Comoro Islands. They live and travel in groups. They are usually awake during the day except for the smaller ones they prefer to stay awak and active during the night when they are most likely safe from predators. They have elongated, claw like middle fingers which is used to dig insects out of the tree barks. They are vegetarian and their diet consists of fruits and insects.

Spider Monkeys live in evergreen rainforests. They usually live in the upper forests and hardly ever come down to the ground to keep away from predators. They have a long, muscular tail that is used as an extra hand. Since they live in the trees and eat on the go they use their tails to swing from branches so that their hands are free to eat. They always travel in medium sized groups  wherever they go. Their diets consist of fruits, plants, seeds, leaves, and bark. They eat large amounts of food over a short period of time while moving.


Baboons live in a wide variety of habitats because they are the most adaptable. They are usually found in southern kenya.  The major requirements for their habitat are water sources and safe sleeping places. They are found in the cliffs and trees. They feed on the go, travel, and socialize together in groups during the day. They are selective feeders and consume mainly grass along with berries, seeds, flowers, and bark. They also eat insects, fish, birds, and vervet monkeys.


Gibbons are omnivores they eat both plants and meat. They sleep alone or with small groups. They spend most of their time in trees and can be found in forests in southeast asia. They travel, eat, and are social during the day. They use fingers like hands to swing from branches and can also walk along small branches and use their long arms to keep their balance.

Chimps are usually found in Africa in the rainforests.  They too eat plants and meat. They eat during the day and sleep at night. They are extremely intelligent and use different types of tools to for hunting, breaking open coconuts or hard shelled fruits, and smoke out termites and ants from their mounds. Their diet is extremely varied and they eat different types of food. They have similar physical qualities to humans.

homologous and analogous traits

A horse's front leg and a human arm are examples of homologous structures. They have the same number and arrangement of bones meaning they probably evolved from a single type of structure present in a common ancestor. Humans are members of the Primates and horses are members of the perissodactyla. Both orders are part of the subclass Eutheria. A horse's front leg and a human arm both contain the humerus, radius, ulna, carpels, metacarpels, and phalanges. In a human, both the bones and muscles work in coordination with each other to makes various functions of the human hand possible. However, in a horse's front leg each bone is connected allowing the horse to lift, bend, and flex it's legs for movements such as running and jumping.



Two examples of analogous species are the whale and the lizard. They have similar skeleton structures but they have different habitats and lifestyles. Whales use their fins to swim and lizards use their legs to climb. Each of them are similar in structure but different in detail. Mosasaur fossils are always found in association with fossils of known marine origin. Whales are known to be descendants of land mammals via several physical characteristics: bones in their flippers which resemble the forelimbs of land mammals, vertical movement of their spines which resembles a running terrestrial animal, and the fact that they must breathe air. Both belond to the class of Mammals.

Protein synthesis

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Thomas Malthus most influential

thomas malthus most influential
I believe that Tomas Malthus was the most significant to the scientific community because he was the one who wrote the essay on the principle of population which led to the theory of natural selection. During his studies he noticed that when resources were plentiful then it led to population growth and less predators. However if there are not enough resources or food then this would be a huge problem and eventually lead to famine and starvation which would decrease the population size because nobody would want give birth to their children during a low economic times.

Without Thalmus' studies I believe they wouldn't have been able to come to the conclusions that they did and would have not discovered natural selection. It seems that Malthu's studies had a positive impact on both Darwin and Wallace because they ended up using Malthus' principles to their advantage and expanded upon his theories. They found that when population size is limited by the availibility of resources then there will most likely be competition.

The church opposed Darwin's theory of evolution because it changed many individual's thoughts on how life came to be. Back then people held on strongly to their religious beliefs so the public was not very accepting of his book. It frightened most people because they feared that the theory of evolution overruled the theory of creation and led to some people questioning their beliefs. Not until later on after Darwin's death did people become more open minded and begin to accept his scientific ideas.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html