LOCOMOTOR DIVERSITY IN PROSIMIAN PRIMATES

An understanding of prosimian movement is basic to many anatomical and paleontological studies in that these studies attempt to correlate movement with anatomy and therefore infer movement and fossil primates. Duke University [North Carolina, USA] has a large and diverse collection of prosimian primates, which are housed in cages and enclosures large enough for movement studies. Extant prosimians move in many different ways, and none are so specialized that only one mode of travel is used. The most general locomotor patterns are observed for the cheirogaleids, and thus theirs may best resemble the locomotor patterns of the ancestral euprimate.