Natural history

Breeding periods

The reproductive events in the primate calendar are copulation, gestation, birth, and lactation. Owing to the long duration of the gestation period, these phases occupy the female primate (among higher primates anyway) for a full year or more; then the cycle starts again. The female does not usually come into physiological receptivity until the infant of the previous pregnancy has been weaned.

Most lemurs and lorises show one or more discrete breeding seasons during the year, during which time they may undergo more than one reproductive estrous cycle (i.e., period of sexual activity). The breeding seasons are separated by periods of anestrus, which in bush babies and mouse lemurs are accompanied by changes in the skin of the external genitalia (vulva), which closes over, completely sealing the vagina. When living in the wild in the Sudan, the lesser bush baby (Galago senegalensis) has an estrus that occurs only twice yearly, during December and August. In captivity, however, breeding seasons may occur at any period in the year. In the wild, birth seasons are closely correlated with the prevailing climate, but in captivity under equable laboratory conditions, this consideration does not apply. For instance, in its native Madagascar, the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) has only a single breeding season during the year, conception occurring in autumn (April) and births taking place in late winter (August and September). However, in zoos in the Northern Hemisphere, a seasonal inversion occurs in which the birth period shifts to late spring and early summer. These examples indicate the influence of environmental factors on the timing of the birth seasons.

Reproductive cycles in tarsiers, apes, and many monkeys continue uninterrupted throughout the year, though seasonality in births is characteristic mainly of monkey species living either outside the equatorial belt (5° north and south of the Equator) or at high elevations in equatorial regions, where dry seasons and seasonal food shortages occur. Seasonality of births in macaques (genus Macaca species) has been documented in Japan, on Cayo Santiago in the Caribbean (where an introduced population thrives under seminatural conditions), and in India. Observations of langurs in India and Sri Lanka, of geladas in Ethiopia, and of patas monkeys in Uganda have also demonstrated seasonality in areas with well-marked wet and dry seasons. Those within the equatorial belt tend to display birth peaks rather than birth seasons. A birth peak is a period of the year in which a high proportion of births, but not by any means all, are concentrated. Equatorial primates such as guenons, colobus monkeys, howlers, gibbons, chimpanzees, and gorillas might be expected to show a pattern of births uniformly distributed throughout the year, but population samples are as yet too small to make this assumption, and some equatorial monkeys, such as squirrel monkeys (genus Saimiri), are strictly seasonal breeders. Even in humans, there is evidence of high birth peaks. In Europe, the highest birth rates are reached in the first half of the year; in the United States, India, and countries in the Southern Hemisphere, in the second half. This may, however, be a cultural rather than an ecological phenomenon, for marriages in certain Western countries reach a peak in the closing weeks of the fiscal year, a fact that undoubtedly has some repercussions on the birth period.

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Gestation period and parturition

The period during which the growing fetus is protected in the uterus is characterized by a considerable range of variation among primate species, but it shows a general trend toward prolongation as one ascends the evolutionary scale. Mouse lemurs, for example, have a gestation period of 54–68 days, lemurs 132–134 days, macaques 146–186 days, gibbons 210 days, chimpanzees 230 days, gorillas 255 days, and humans (on the average) 267 days. Even small primates such as bush babies have gestations considerably longer than those of nonprimate mammals of equivalent size, a reflection of the increased complexity and differentiation of primate structure compared with that of nonprimates. Although in primates there is a general trend toward evolutionary increase in body size, there is no absolute correlation between body size and the duration of the gestation period. Marmosets, for example, are considerably smaller than spider monkeys and howler monkeys but have a slightly longer pregnancy (howler monkeys 139 days, “true” marmosets 130–150 days).

An extraordinary and somewhat inexplicable difference exists between the dimensions of the pelvic cavity and the dimensions of the head of the infant at birth in monkeys and humans on the one hand, and apes on the other. The head of the infant ape is considerably smaller than the pelvic cavity, so birth occurs easily and without prolonged labour. When the head of the infant monkey engages in the pelvis, the fit is exact, and labour may be a prolonged and difficult affair, as it is generally with humans. Human parturition, however, is generally a much more extended process than that of monkeys. Like the human infant, the monkey is born head first. Twin births are rare in most monkeys and apes, but marmosets and some lemurs and lorises habitually produce twins.

Infancy

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The degrees of maturation and mother dependency at birth are obviously closely related phenomena. Newborn primate infants are neither as helpless as kittens, puppies, or rats nor as developed as newborn gazelles, horses, and other savanna-living animals. With a few exceptions, primate young are born with their eyes open and are fully furred. Exceptions are mouse lemurs (Microcebus), gentle lemurs (Hapalemur), and ruffed lemurs (Varecia), which bear more helpless (altricial) infants and carry their young in their mouth. Primate life being peripatetic, it is axiomatic that the infants must be able to cling to the mother’s fur; just a few species (again, mouse lemurs and ruffed lemurs and a few others) leave their infants in nests while foraging, and lorises “park” their young, leaving them hanging under branches in tangles of vegetation. The young of most higher primates have grasping hands and feet at birth and are able to cling to the maternal fur without assistance; only humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas need to support their newborn infants, and humans do so longest.

It seems likely that the difference between the African apes and humans in respect to postnatal grasping ability is related to the acquisition in man of bipedal walking. One of the anatomic correlates of the human gait is the loss of the grasping function of the big toe, which is aligned in parallel with the remaining digits. Such an arrangement precludes the use of the foot as a grasping extremity. The human infant—and to a lesser degree the gorilla infant—must depend largely on its grasping hands to support itself unaided. The fact that humans are habitually bipedal and that, consequently, the hands are freed from locomotor chores may also be a contributory factor; the human mother can move about and at the same time continue to support her infant. Selection for postnatal grasping, therefore, has not had the high survival value in humans that it has in nonhuman primates, in which the survival of the infant depends on its ability to hold on tightly. On the other hand, it is well known that newborn human infants can support their own weight, for short periods, by means of their grasping hands. Clearly then, adaptations for survival are not wholly lacking in the human species. Perhaps cultural factors have had the effect of suppressing natural selection for early infant grasping ability. The first factor may be the social evolution of a division of labour between the sexes and a fixed home base, which has allowed the mother to park her infant with other members of the family as babysitters. A second factor may be more peripatetic communities, in which the invention of infant-carrying devices, such as the papoose technique of North American Indians, has made it unnecessary for the infant to support itself. Whatever the biological or cultural reasons, the human infant is more helpless than the young of all other primates.

Once the primate infant has learned to support itself by standing on its own two (or four) feet, the physical phase of dependency is over; the next phase, psychological dependency, lasts much longer. The human child is metaphorically tied to its mother’s apron strings for much longer periods than are the nonhuman primates. The reasons for this are discussed below. According to Adolph Schultz, the Swiss anthropologist whose comparative anatomic studies have illuminated knowledge of nonhuman primates since the mid-20th century, the juvenile period of psychological maternal dependency is 21/2 years in lemurs, 6 years in monkeys, 7–8 years in most apes (though it now appears to be even longer than this in chimpanzees), and 14 years in humans.