Page 324 - Microsoft Word - LessonPlan-Overview.doc
P. 324
Unit 18: Biology Part 1 Page 39 of 60
cerebellum, and brainstem. In females are very different sizes.
primates, the size of the cerebrum Males are about twice as large as
is larger in comparison to the other
two parts. Since the cerebrum
controls things including thinking,
learning, and language, it is
thought that this larger cerebrum
explains the high intelligence of
primates, even compared to other
mammals. Primates show their
intelligence in their ability to learn females. This may be because
and have social interaction, males are polygamous, and try to
including playing and fighting. attract as many females as
possible. Some monkeys are
monogamous, and the males and
females work together to raise
their offspring are about the same
size.
Unlike other animals that typically
have a large number of offspring at
once, primates tend to only have
one baby at a time. They also
have a fairly long gestation time,
or time that the offspring spends in
the mother’s womb. The
Primates can be divided into three advantage to this is that the baby
groups, monkeys, prosimians, and is born more advanced, and thus
the apes. Prosimians include more likely to survive.
lemurs and animals closely related
to lemurs. These animals live in Many primates are arboreal, and
Madagascar, an island off the coast most of those primates who are
of Africa, and a group of islands in not completely arboreal spend at
the Indian Ocean. Monkeys and least some of their time in trees.
apes (except humans) are found in Very few species are able to live
Africa and in the Americas. completely on land. Arboreal
primates have many characteristics
Apes and old world monkeys tend that make them suited for life in
to have sexual dimorphism, trees. With their opposable
meaning that the males and
© 2011 Supercharged Science www.ScienceLearningSpace.com
726
