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Today is International Primate Day! And so, meet the primates of Equestria! Despite the vast menagerie of primate species, only two appeared in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (unless you include humans, which only appeared in Equestria Girls) - spider monkeys and a chimpanzee.
 
We first saw the spider monkeys in the Royal Gardens in Canterlot, and we would see them now and again under Fluttershy’s care. The only chimpanzee we ever got to see was in the season 4 episode, “Three’s A Crowd,” when a “sick” Discord requested to ride a giant chimpanzee while being nursed by Twilight Sparkle and Cadance. Although no other primates appeared in the show, there were characters with primate features, like the centaur, Tirek, with his ape or macaque-like face, and the Storm King, who looked like a sort of apelike beast with cloven hooves and a monkeylike tail. The comic did give us a gorilla on a number of occasions, and while there were no prosimians in the cartoon, the season 10 comic, Scootaloo’s parents, Snap Shutter and Mane Allgood, discovered a subspecies of bushbabies in Shire Lanka, and their covering is made of foliages, living up to the name “bush” baby. And in a concept art for My Little Pony: the Movie, one of the new characters the Mane Six encounter, Needy, was originally going to be a tarsier before he became a sloth.
 
Before I give you a discussion about primates, let’s talk about this. This was actually made back in March. I planned on posting it as soon as I finished making vectors of the primates featured in the show. At first, I considered using the rainbow background, but then I felt like it didn’t work. So I spent five months letting this sit and leaving me to wonder what changes I should make to this. Twice, I attempted to sta.sh this, but I would always hesitate. It wasn’t until I learned International Primate Day was on the first day of September, then I decided to post it then. Fortunately, my World Elephant Day project gave me a better background to use. So I’m glad I finally got to have an excuse to upload this. Now, I do want to point out that since the only chimpanzee to appear in MLP:FIM was running in only one scene, the ape’s design may not be considered completely accurate. Since an ape’s femur is almost vertical, when standing their legs are more or less parallel with a gap. So this may be more accurate in ape anatomy. If only chimpanzees appeared more in the show.
 

 
Primates are very incredible animals, and perhaps the most intelligent of species on Earth. Adapted to a life in the trees, possessing a dietary plasticity (eating a variety of foods besides banana), investing a lot of time and care in their young, have a versatile skeletal structure, an enhanced sense of touch, stereoscopic and color vision, complex societies per species, and finally possessing an intelligence that rivals every other animal.
 
There are many types of primates. First, there are prosimians, which include lemurs, bushbabies or galagoes, lorises, and pottos. These primates have primitive characteristics such as the rhinarium (the external wet noses found in prosimians and most other mammals) and enhanced sense of smell no longer found in other primates, and possess relatively specialized diets and behavior in contrast to the other, more generalized primates. Prosimians are found in only three parts of the world, Africa, Asia, and the island of Madagascar, where the world’s only lemur species exist to this day. While most lemurs are diurnal, apart from the aye-aye, most prosimians are nocturnal, feeding and breeding at night. Lemurs and Lorises have a specialized dental or tooth comb used for grooming. Another prosimian is the tarsier, a small carnivorous primate, however, it is not strepsirhine as it has no rhinarium and other derived characteristics with other primates.
 
Next, there are two types of monkeys: New World monkeys and Old World monkey. The former (referred to Platyrrhines “broad-nose”) are found in Central and South America, while the latter (Catarrhines “narrow-nose”) live in Africa, southern, southeastern, and eastern Asia, and southern Europe. They have larger brains, are more sexually dimorphic in body size and anatomical characteristics, and have color vision. New World monkeys are arboreal, spending nearly all their time in trees, though there are occasions where they will be on the ground. Most have prehensile tails, thus acting as an extra limb. New World monkeys include howler monkeys, wooly monkeys, squirrel monkeys, owl monkeys, uakari, spider monkeys, and capuchins). Capuchins are perhaps the most well-known of Platyrrhines because they are the only known of their kind to use stone tools. Old World monkeys are the most diverse and most successful of nonhuman primates, inhabiting a wide range of habitats, but mostly prefer tropics and subtropics. Some are arboreal and some are terrestrial, and NONE have prehensile tails. Catarrhines include macaques (which are the most adaptive of primates, apart from humans), vervet monkeys, langurs, colobus monkeys, proboscis monkeys (the monkeys with the Squidward nose), mangabeys, baboons, mandrills, and drills. The only monkey to appear in the My Little Pony show was a spider monkey. What’s fascinating is that they have thumbs in the cartoon, although most species in our world have eithe reduced thumbs or no thumbs at all to make swinging through trees easier.
 
Then, there are apes. Contrary to what people think, apes are not monkeys and vice versa. Apes are part of a separate family of primates called Hominidae. What also separates them from monkeys is that they have long arms compared with their legs, having an intermembral index of more than 100, whereas monkeys have an IMI of about 100 since the arms and legs are the same length. The reason for this long arm anatomy is to be used for brachiation, or arm-swinging, so apes are classified as brachiators. And while all apes lack tails, some monkeys do too. There are two types of apes: Lesser apes and great apes. Lesser apes include gibbons and siamangs, and they are all found in Southeast Asia. They are skilled brachiators, using their upper limbs to move from tree limb to tree limb. They are also monogamous, living together in mated pairs.
 
The great apes are found in Southeast Asia and Africa. The red-haired orangutan is the only great ape that lives in Asia. There are three species, the Bornean orangutan, which lives in Borneo, the Sumatran orangutan, and the recently discovered Tanapuli orangutan, which both share the island of Sumatra. Like lesser apes, orangs are skilled brachiators and are the most arboreal of great apes. Orangutans are unique for leading solitary lives, with the dominant male having a vast territory for himself and females he’s mated with sharing it. Africa houses gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos, but are restricted to small equatorial areas. Gorillas are the largest of the great apes, and spend most of their time on the ground, employing a specialized form of quadrupedalism called knuckle-walking, in which their very strong arms are used to support their upper body weight while positioned on the backs of their fingers’ middle phalanges. Contrary to 20th century films, gorillas are gentle herbivores, feeding mostly on leaves, plant stems, and other vegetation. There are two species: the western gorilla, which has black, gray, and brown, short hairs, and the eastern gorilla, which has thick black hair. While western gorillas are the species we mostly see in zoos, a subspecies of eastern gorillas - the mountain gorilla - is the more famous as they are critically endangered, were studied by the late primatologist Diane Fossey, and have become a popular species for eco-tourism. Gorillas live in a polygynous troop, consisting of a dominant male, or silverback due to the saddle of silver hair on his back, a harem of females, and his children. Both our closest living relatives - chimpanzees and bonobos - share the same genus Pan, both live in complex societies not so dissimilar to our own, and use tools. Chimpanzees live in a male-dominated society, run by a group of males including the dominant male and his cronies and who all have very complicated interrelationships. Contrary to the silly antics displayed by the chimps in movies (them actually being juvenile apes), chimpanzees are incredibly aggressive and have been known to go to war with other chimps, conquering their territories, and killing others in the process. Bonobos, on the other hand, exist in a female-dominated society, and unlike their more aggressive sibling species, they are less confrontational. Bonobos are famous for their alternative to war and conflict. These “make love, not war apes” are peaceful and use sex to diffuse tension, with both males and female bonobos engaging in hetero- and homosexual behavior. Bonobos are more cooperative than chimpanzees with problem-solving. Both apes are omnivorous, feeding on fruit, leaves, bark, insects like termites, and even meat. Chimpanzees have been known to hunt cooperatively, pursuing bushbabies, bushbucks, duikers, warthogs, and even monkeys; the red colobus is their most preferred quarry. The chimpanzee was the only ape to appear in My Little Pony, though oddly enough he or she had brown hair instead of dark brown or black hair.
 
All apes use tools and even make simple tools. Orangutans and gorillas will use branches to measure the depth of lakes before crossing. Orangutans from zoos have been known for breaking out of their enclosures after observing caretakers locking and unlocking doors. Chimpanzees also demonstrate unique cultures through tool use; whereas eastern chimpanzees studied by famed primatologist Jane Goodall used twigs to fish out termites, chimpanzees in Western Africa used stones to smash termite nests. Some chimps even used sharpened sticks to stab galagoes to death (and since all apes are as strong as 10 men it’s lethally effective). Apes also have a wide range of communication, from vocalization, facial expressions, and body language. All four species have been taught how to communicate to humans, from American sign languages to orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas - like the famous, late Koko - to using lexigrams for bonobos, like Kanzi.
 
Despite all this, their tremendous intelligence, their capacity to display emotions and behavior very much like we do such as laughing and crying, and despite us being related to them, all apes are critically endangered due to poaching, deforestation and logging, oil palm plantations, and strip-mining. We humans may be the most diverse of all primates, but we’re also the only members of the genus Homo left and our ape cousins are in great danger. So let’s find ways to save them before we lose them forever. I wish I could provide more info, but I’m already turning this description into a treatise as it is. Maybe I’ll post something for the occasion.
 
So that’s all for now. Here’s to the primates. Here’s to every lemur, bush baby, capuchin, spider monkey, macaque, baboon, mandrill, gibbon, orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, and bonobo! Happy Primate Day everybody! :D (Big Grin) :happybounce: I’m so glad I finally got to find an excuse to upload this.