ANTH 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Haplorhini, Fibula, Simian
4 Dec 2017
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Traditionally classified as strepsirhini (prosimians) (small body, large ears, primitive dental pattern, unelaborate social behaviour) but resemble haplorhini (anthropoids) in several ways, so much so that your text (p 107) indicates the tarsiers as haplorhini. So, it is pretty clear that tarsiers are in between the lemurs and lorises and the monkeys and apes, but are more closely related biochemically to the anthropoids. The chart below summarizes these differences and similarities. They demonstrate extreme mobility of the neck (occipital joint), which allows the tarsier a 180 rotation of the head so that backward leaping is visually controlled (owls = 240 ). After take-off, the whole body below the neck twists about its long axis, thus cancelling out , as it were, the initial neck twist. Principally insectivorous: the tarsier perches about a meter above the forest floor scanning the ground, and when it sees an insect it pounces upon it.
