Sociality and Mating Patterns of Primates

 

Lemurs live only on Madagascar in various regions of the island. The climate and habitats range from dry deserts to wet rainforest. Lemurs are social but live in small groups and love mostly in trees. They forage for food alone at night and nest in groups during the day. All but two species mate according to the seasons when resources are more plentiful. The mating season is very short lasting only roughly three weeks in a given year. The mating pattern is adaptive to the environment because of the reliance on resources during the birth season.

Spider Monkeys are found primarily in Central and South America but as far north as Mexico. They live in trees and rarely come down to the ground. They form groups of 15 to 20 and break down into smaller sub groups during the day. These groups vary in size according to the competition for food.  The female picks her mate from among the group and bears offspring once every three to four years.  The young depends completely on the mother for everything for the first ten months of its life. Since it’s the females responsibility to find food for the group and the intense care of the young ones at the same time it could be derived that this is why she only mates every few years.

Baboons are found in East Africa. They live on a variety of climates and are typically ground dwellers but sleep in trees or cliff faces. They are extremely adaptable. They are social creatures and stay together in groups of about 50, with the ratio of males to females 1:2. Mating behavior varies according to the troop and its social structure. In some groups the male can mate with any female. In other troops the male woos the female of his choice.

Gibbons are found in tropical rainforests in Asia and live in trees. They live in small familial groups similar to our families. Gibbons mate for life after singing to find each other. When a pair find they like each other’s song, they find one another and mate approximately five hundred times in a three day ritual.

Chimpanzees’ natural habitat is the rainforest although they have been found in swamps, woodlands, savannahs and bamboo forests. They spend equal time in trees and on land. They are very social and live in groups of several dozen. The females mate with many males and are sometimes restricted by the dominant male forbidding some males to mate with her. She is sometimes forced to find mates in other groups because of this.

In summary, there are many differences in mating patterns among these primates with the gibbon and chimpanzee being the closest to human beings. I did have a hard time finding an adaptation in these traits in connection with environment on a few of these.