A Life In The Trees Analysis

Reaction to "A Life in the Trees" In the Video "A Life in the Trees", narrated by David Attenborough many of the characteristics of primates that we have been talking about in class were highlighted. As we talked about in class, primates have two major specializations. Forward facing eyes and hands with opposable thumbs. The video mostly focused on Lemurs, monkeys, and apes. It was clear that, while each one of these groups of primates has those same two specializations, they all use them in slightly different ways, depending on where they evolved. The first thing that caught my attention was how each primate evolved to fit its environment. For example, Ring-tailed lemurs, which live exclusively on Madagascar, are both arboreal and terrestrial meaning their environment must have plentiful forests. I thought it was very interesting when the troop of lemurs went to the stream to drink and used their tails as a signal other members of the troop. I had never heard of lemurs using their tails for this purpose before. Sifakas lemurs also only live on Madagascar, but these lemurs developed longer

Each primate the video showed looked very humanoid to me, and it struck me that could just as easily be us swinging from trees right now. When they were showing footage of the Gibbons I was amazed at how well they could jump. It reminded me of what we talked about in class about primates forward facing eyes giving them 3-D vision. There is no was the Gibbons could jump and land as well as they do without incredible depth perception, gained through forward facing eyes. Every primate in the video used their hands and opposable thumbs to grasp limbs and catch and eat food. The young also used their hands and primal grasping reflex to cling to their parents. It was fascinating to see real examples of the concepts we learned about in