Anthropology: The Dentition Of A Human - Essay Example

Some of the main features of primates include the presence of hands and feet, shoulders and hips, and brain among others. Primarily, almost all living primates like orang-utans have prehensile hands and feet with five digits on these appendages including opposable thumbs for holding on and manipulating objects. The presence of hands and feet enable many primates to hold food or grab onto branches or tanks to hold on. These features enable them to live in trees successfully and efficiently. Secondly, unlike other mammals, primates have flexible and limber shoulders and hip joints, whereby, the shoulders assist them to move and swing through trees and to climb up or down quickly.

More so, their hips are mobile and allow them to move their legs freely. These special features have evolved with time to help primates adapt to an arboreal lifestyle. Furthermore, all primates exhibit the tendency to be erect as reflected in their ability to sit or stand and this applies even to the quadrupedal primates (Jurmain, Kilgore and Trevathan, 100). Primates have flexible and generalized limb structure which helps them to practice various locomotor behaviors and generally, they exhibit four different forms of locomotion, that is, vertical clinging and leaping; quadrupedalism.

This involves the use of forelimbs and hind limbs in walking, climbing, and swinging; brachiation which mainly involves swinging by the forelimbs; and bipedalism where all are able to sit and stand upright.