Primate Order: Dentition Patterns

Lemurs

1. Lemurs are native to the island of Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa.  Madagascar is very hot, humid and known to have cyclone seasons due to the winds that come in from the east. 
2. The dentition pattern of the lemur is that of a six-tooth teethcomb with 2 canine like premolars towards the back.
3. The toothcomb allows for the lemurs to groom each other and is also used for shearing leaves and eating into the bark of trees to get into the sap portion of the trees in the region it lives.
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Spider Monkey

1. Spider Monkeys are prevalent in the Southern Mexico to South American rainforests.  The rain forests bear lots of fruit, the main food source for the Spider monkey.
2. The teeth of a spider monkey jut out from its mouth.
3. The way the teeth go outward in a slant helps the spider monkey in devouring fruits from the rain forest in which it lives. 
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Baboon

1. Baboons are found in African and Arabian savannahs and woodlands.  They are able to adapt to any land as long as there is a water source and a safe place to sleep such as a tall tree or a cliff side.
2. Baboons are known for their very long canine teeth. This is due to the fact that baboons actually have a fair amount of meat in their diet ranging from fish, to even small antelopes.
3. The longer teeth allow the baboon to bite into and kill smaller animals to eat meat.  This helps in the savannahs where there isn't as much vegetation to sustain a proper diet for the baboons.  Although a baboon's primary source of food is vegetation, it also eats more meat than most primates do.
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Gibbon

1. Gibbons are native to the northeastern rain forests of India into Indonesia and Southern China.
2. Gibbons have small jaws with long canine teeth, similar to the baboon.
3. Gibbons have the long teeth in helping them with the small portion of meat they do eat in their diet.  They prefer however to eat lots of fruit, especially fruits high in sugar such as figs.  The smaller jaw helps with the biting into the fruit.
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Chimpanzee

1. Chimpanzees are found in the forests of west and central Africa.
2. Chimpanzees have the same outward jutting jaw as the Spider Monkey that helps in the fruit eating diet.  They also have the longer canine teeth but are not known to be meat eaters.They also have a thinner enamel than other primates to help them form sharper teeth they need to tear through leaves and fruit that they eat.
3. The jaw is the most relevant of the teeth of the chimp as it offers the best reason for eating fruit. The thinner enamel was slo interesting in knowing it allows for sharper teeth to help tear through the leaves of their secondary food source. 
4. 

Having looked at the dentition patterns of all the primates covered, it was interesting to see the slight changes the primates have gone through.  The fruit eaters have the jaw that juts out that allows for bigger bites of the fruit. The long canine teeth of the baboon and gibbon that help with their carnivorous habits, and the teethcomb of the lemur that allows them to effectively groom each other and allows for them to bite into the trees for the tree sap they also like to eat.  The overall structure of the dentition patterns of the primates are all very similar with very acute differences that benefit the species in its own unique way. It would seem since forests are the main place of habitat for primates, that environment didn't heavily figure in their adapted teeth.  Many of the functions of the teeth were to eat fruit from the forests with the exception of the baboon which had much longer canine teeth to help in its eating of meat.