Primatology: what it is, what it studies, and how it is investigated

In science there are two ways to know how human beings were before. One consists of looking towards the remains of the past, that is, collecting fossils and remains of our ancestors, comparing them and deducing what they should be like.

The other is to compare our behavior with that of the species most closely related to ours, that is, those that are part of the primate order.

Primatology is a very interesting scientific discipline that, in addition to taking into account the fossil record, focuses its efforts on understanding how our relatives the chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas behave to understand why we are as we are. Let's take a closer look at it.

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What is primatology?

Primatology is the scientific discipline that is dedicated to studying primates, both through research on their behavior in nature and through the fossil record of primate species extinct.

Primates are a taxonomic order that includes plantigrade mammals with five fingers, which end in nails on their extremities and have thumbs that are opposable to the rest on their limbs superiors.

Within this order the Homo sapiens, that is, our species, is included.

As a scientific branch, primatology encompasses knowledge from many disciplines such as biology, anthropology, ecology, psychology, philosophy and many more.

From all these branches he manages to extract knowledge such as how the organs of primates work, what is their social behavior, to what extent they are able to think, if they can acquire human skills such as language...

History of this scientific discipline

Long before modern molecular biology and even before Charles Darwin and his well-known work The origin of species (1856) in which he already indicated his suspicions about the primate origin of Homo sapiens, Carl von Linné (1707-1778) was classifying our species in the same group as that of the monkey lineage.

This classification was made based on how similar the species were to each other. He saw that monkeys, chimpanzees, and orangutans closely resemble human beings, and for this reason he put them in the same taxon.

Linnaeus lived long before Darwin and his modern evolutionary ideas, but of course something must have made him think that he had seen similarities not only between these primates and humans, but also between other species such as dogs and wolves or cats and tigers.

He was a great visionary in this regard because, without having his tools such as molecular biology available to him, He knew how to closely place species such as the chimpanzee and the Homo sapiens, which we know share about 98% of the genetic material.

After Darwin and his work and all the scandal that was generated, scientific society was becoming more and more aware of the evolutionary closeness between these monkeys and humans. However, despite this knowledge, It wasn't until the 1920s that an interest in living and kicking primates became. Until that time, scientific efforts had focused on studying fossil remains of hominids and possible links between primordial primates and the first Homo sapiens.

The reason why they should have preferred to study dusty lifeless remains over gorillas, chimpanzees and others primates that could be observed full of life is surely due to the difficult acceptance at the time about the facts evolutionary.

Based on the mentality of the time, the idea of ​​descending from the monkey was somewhat unpleasant, so it must have been more difficult for the proud scientific community seek the answers to what the human being is like by analyzing the behavior of some hairy little men who go from branch to branch.

But despite all this the first studies with current primates as protagonists ended up being carried out. At first they focused on the behavior of chimpanzees and how they were capable of solving problems of various kinds. Later the observation fell on the baboons, discovering that sex was a fundamental basis of their society and, surely, also that of Homo sapiens.

At a time when codes governing experimentation were non-existent for human experiments, they were unthinkable for animals. This is why more than one unscrupulous scientist pretending to see if he could play God made crosses by artificial insemination of higher primates with human beings.

Fortunately, this sin against nature did not give birth, since, despite the similarities between primates, the genetic differences are large enough that there is no hybridization of no type.

With the passage of time it ended seeing that it was unwise to study primates in only aspects such as their biology and psychology under extremely controlled laboratory conditions. In order to know to what extent they resemble human beings, it is necessary to know how they behave, and the only way to do so naturally is in their natural habitat.

For this reason, the tendency of primatologists was to abandon the cold experimental rooms animal to move on to field work in Africa, where the most primate species are found interesting

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What data do primates offer us?

When it comes to biology, there are many things we can learn about ourselves observing the anatomy of primates and how it has changed throughout the history of evolution. This is where we can talk in two ways to compare ourselves with them: analogy and homology.

Analogy

The analogy helps us to infer the similar functions of the organs and other parts of the body of two or more species, comparing their shape. A) Yes, It is through the comparative study of the analogy that we can know how extinct species acted or moved in life. comparing its fossil remains with the bone structures of animals that still exist.

If a characteristic is observed that has a particular function in a species, it is assumed that that same function also It was presented by the extinct species, when it was observed that in its fossil remains it also presented that characteristic anatomical. With all this we can draw conclusions about how an extinct primate behaved by establishing an analogy with a similar current life form.

Homology

Homology is used to reconstruct the genealogical trees of the evolution of the species. It implies establishing the relationship we have with a common ancestor from the similarity of the forms or the extremities, how these were until the characteristics that are presented today were obtained, in this case, in our organism. Between non-human primates and Homo sapiens, several common structures can be found that make us different from other orders of mammals.

In primates you can find five fingers on each hand and foot, as well as some characteristic bones in the skeleton, such as the clavicle. The fingers are prehensile, having visible tips and flat nails instead of the claws that we can find in other mammals., as are lions, cats or dogs.

As we climb the evolutionary tree we can see that our snouts are shrinking, flattening and becoming the nose and mouth as separate parts.

In addition, we have stereoscopic vision, that is, we have superimposed vision in both eyes, and it is this sense which has been evolving in a very notorious way, to such an extent that the sense of smell has been losing importance.

In all primates it can be seen that the brain is quite an advanced organ compared to other mammals. The brain has been having a progressive development, especially in some areas such as the cerebral cortex, so important for human beings, which is what, basically, gives us our intelligence as we understand it.

Another very interesting aspect that other primates share is the gestation period, which is characterized by being long (humans 9 months, chimpanzees 7 months, gorillas 8 months). In addition, it has been observed that among primates we tend to give birth at night.

Important figures

The most prominent figure in primatology is undoubtedly the English primatologist Jane Goodall. This scientist, a member of the Order of the British Empire and the French Legion, devoted herself to studying for more than five decades (she started in 1960) chimpanzee social ties in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park contributing large discoveries.

Her determination and her conviction that she would be able to observe behaviors that no other researcher had observed before her earned her wide recognition. In addition, Goodall is known for her work in favor of animal welfare.

Another figure is that of Dian Fossey, whose work at Karisoke Research in Rwanda showed that gorillas can become habituated to the presence of humans. Fossey learned that female gorillas are sometimes transferred between groups and that gorillas are capable of eating their own feces to recycle nutrients.

We have the third great figure of primatology in Birute Galdikas, who spent about 12 years trying to get a group of orangutans from Borneo, Indonesia, used to his presence. Galdikas used modern statistical techniques to finish her doctoral thesis in 1978 in which she explained what the behavior of orangutans and their interactions were like.

Bibliographic references:

• Bramblet, C. (1984). The behavior of primates: guidelines and perspectives, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
• Haraway, Donna J. (1990). Primate Visions. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-90294-6.
• Goodall, J. (1966). Behavior of free-living chimpanzees (doctoral thesis). University of Cambridge.