Archive for the 'Primate' Category
The chimpanzee is one of the anthropoid, or manlike, apes. It lives in the vast tropical rain forest that stretches across the center of Africa.
It is probably the best known of all the great apes, for it is extensively used as an experimental animal in the study of human diseases, and because it is relatively [...]
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This savage looking baboon is a cousin of the equally hideous mandrill, both of which live in west Africa. One explanation of the named drill is that it is a very old English word meaning baboon or ape. A mandrill is, by that account, a man ape.
The drill is a heavily muscled, powerful animal. Walking [...]
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In northern South America there are several kinds of small monkeys known as douroucoulis, or owl monkeys. Some of them really do have faces quite like owls, with very large eyes, small ears and the hair around their eyes spread out in a cowlick rather like the feathers around the eyes of an owl.
They have one [...]
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One of the strangest and rarest animals in the world is the aye-aye of Madagascar – strange because scientists were puzzled for a long time to know whether it belonged to the rodent family or to the lemur family (relatives of monkeys), and rare because it is found only in Madagascar and even there is [...]
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Bush baby is another name for the galago, a large eyed, night loving little animal of Africa. There are more than thirty kinds of galago and some are hardly larger than a mouse, while the largest are only about as big as a cat. They are primitive relatives of the monkey.
Since the galagos great brown eyes [...]
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All of the baboons are sometimes called “dog faced monkeys” because of their long muzzles, and the name fits the gelada baboon perfectly – it looks like a very large and very bad tempered french poodle. The resemblance, of course, comes mostly from the tremendous mantle of long, black hair that grows on the animal’s [...]
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Many of the animals that zoologists call primates – the apes, monkeys, baboons and lemurs – are droll looking or even pretty, but all the baboons are hideous and frightening in appearance. Most of them have bad tempers.
The chacma baboon of South Africa is the largest of the baboons and a big one will weigh [...]
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The ancient Egyptians believed that the hamadryas baboon was sacred to their god Thoth, and the templates of the city of Hermopolis were devoted to this animal. The bodies of thousands of the “sacred baboon” were mummified by the Egyptians.
Today the hamadryas is not found in Egypt, but in Ethopia and Arabia. Nevertheless it seems [...]
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One of the most famous of all monkeys is the barbary ape for it is the one that is to be found running at liberty on the great fortress Rock of Gibraltar.
Nobody knows exactly how it got there, for the Rock is on the European side of the Mediterranean, and the true home of this [...]
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