Primatology: what it is, what it studies, and how it is researched.

A scientific discipline that helps us to know animals similar to us.

In science, there are two ways to know what humans were like before. One is to look at the remains of the past, i.e., by collecting fossils and remains of our ancestors, comparing them and deducing what they must have been like.

The other consists of comparing our behavior with that of the species most closely related to ours, i.e., those that form part of the primate order.

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

• Related article, "What is Ethology and what is its object of study?"

What is primatology?

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

Primates are a taxonomic order that includes plantigrade mammalian animals with five toes, which end in nails on their limbs and have opposable thumbs on the upper limbs. Within this order, the Homo sapiensi.e., our species, is included in this order..

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

From all these branches it manages to extract knowledge such as how primates' organs work, what their social behavior is, to what extent they are capable of thinking, whether 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..

He did this classification on the basis of how similar the species were to each other. He saw that monkeys, chimpanzees and orangutans are very similar to humans, and for this reason he put them in the same taxon.

Linnaeus lived long before Darwin and his modern evolutionary ideas, but certainly something must have made him think about the fact that he saw 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 aspect because, without the availability of tools such as molecular biology, he was able to place species such as the chimpanzee and the chimpanzee in the family tree, he was able to place closely in the genealogical tree species such as the chimpanzee and the Homo sapienswhich we know share about 98% of the genetic material.

After Darwin and his work and all the scandal that was generated, scientific society became increasingly aware of the evolutionary closeness between these apes and humans. However, despite this knowledge, it was not until the 1920s it was not until the 1920s that interest was focused on living and breathing primates.. Until that time, scientific efforts had focused on studying fossil remains of hominids and possible links between early primates and the first Homo sapiens.

The reason why it must have been preferable to study dusty, lifeless remains rather than gorillas, chimpanzees and other primates that could be observed full of life is probably due to the difficult acceptance of evolutionary facts at the time.

Based on the mentality of the time, the idea of being descended from monkeys was something unpleasant, so it must have been even more difficult for the proud scientific community to find the answers to what it is like to be human by analyzing the behavior of little furry men who go from branch to branch.

But despite all this the first studies with actual primates as the protagonists were eventually carried out.. At first they focused on the behavior of chimpanzees and how they were able to solve different kinds of problems. Later, the observation fell on baboons, and it was discovered that sex was a fundamental basis of their society and, surely, of that of Homo sapiens as well.

At a time when codes regulating experimentation were non-existent for experiments on humans, these were unthinkable for animals. This is why more than one unscrupulous scientist, trying to see if he could play God, carried out crossbreeding by artificial insemination of higher primates with human beings.

Fortunately, this sin against nature did not give birth, since, in spite of the similarities between primates, the genetic differences are sufficiently great so that there is no hybridization of any kind.

As time went by, it became clear 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 for them to behave naturally is in their natural habitat.

For this reason, primatologists have been moving away from the cold rooms of animal experimentation to field work in Africa, where the most interesting primate species are found.

What data do primates offer us?

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

Analogy

Analogy serves us to infer the similar functions of organs and other body parts of two or more species by comparing their shape. Thus, it is through the comparative study of analogy that we can learn how extinct species acted or moved in life by comparing their fossil remains with the fossil remains of other species. by comparing their fossil remains with the bone structures of animals that still exist.

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

Homology

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

In primates, five fingers can be found on each hand and foot, as well as some characteristic bones in the skeleton, such as the clavicle. Fingers are prehensile, having visible fingertips and flat nails instead of the claws found in other mammals, such as lions, lionesses and other mammals.such as lions, cats or dogs.

As we go up the evolutionary tree we can observe that our snouts are getting smaller, 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 that has evolved in a very noticeable way, to such an extent that smell has been losing importance.

In all primates it can be observed that the brain is a rather advanced organ in comparison with other mammals.. The brain has undergone a progressive development, especially in some areas such as the cerebral cortex, which is so important for human beings that it is basically what gives us our intelligence as we understand it.

Another very interesting aspect that we share with other primates 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 during the night.

Important figures

The most important figure in primatology is undoubtedly the English primatologist Jane Goodall.. This scientist, Member of the Order of the British Empire and of the French Legion, devoted herself to study for more than five decades (she started in 1960) the social bonds of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, contributing with great discoveries.

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

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

The third great figure in primatology is Birute Galdikas, who spent nearly 12 years trying to habituate a group of orangutans in Borneo, Indonesia, to his presence. Galdikas used modern statistical techniques to finish his doctoral thesis in 1978 in which he explained how orangutan behavior and their interactions were

Bibliographical references:

• Bramblet, C. (1984). El comportamiento de los primates: pautas y perspectivas, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
• Haraway, Donna J. (1990). Primate Visions. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-90294-6.
• Goodall, J. (1966). Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees (tesis doctoral). Universidad de Cambridge.