Red Colobus: What is Primates ?

Why in News?The Red colobus, a rare group of imperilled monkeys spread across Africa, are primary indicators of biodiversity decline in the continent’s tropical forests. Conserving them could hold the keys to protecting these forests, a new study by an international team of scientists stated on April 30, 2024.
Declining populations of red colobus “forewarn the fate of other large-bodied terrestrial vertebrates across African tropical forests and portend a bleak future for Africa’s biodiversity if a business-as-usual approach is followed,” a statement by New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, which is part of the research, noted.
The scientists — from almost 20 institutions in the United States, Europe, and Africa — urged peers, civil society, local communities, funding agencies and other stakeholders “to invest in red colobus conservation efforts to help protect Africa’s tropical forests and biodiversity, mitigate the impacts of climate change, and improve food security and public health”.
Investing in and conserving the red colobus species “could have cascading net positive impacts on African tropical forest health in the face of a growing biodiversity crisis”, they added.
They called for all red colobus to be provided legal protections and their inclusion as priority conservation species in national laws and international treaties.
Other recommendations made included greater investment in the creation and management of protected areas for red colobus monkeys, providing support to and engaging with communities that live in close proximity to these primates, carrying out surveys to estimate the exact populations of these monkeys and creating awareness about their conservation value.

From Senegal to Zanzibar:
Red colobus monkeys are one of two major simian groups globally. Colobines are primarily leaf-eaters, as compared to the cercopithecines, which are omnivores and thus include animals in their diet as well.
Colobines, which also include the langurs of south and southeast Asia besides Africa’s colobus (olive and black-and-white besides red) monkeys, need to exercise a tremendous amount of choice in the kinds of plant materials they feed on or the way they process such materials, one of India’s top primatologists Anindya Sinha told Down To Earth recently.

Humans are primates–a diverse group that includes some 200 species.
Monkeys, lemurs and apes are our cousins, and we all have evolved from a common ancestor over the last 60 million years. Because primates are related, they are genetically similar. Human DNA is, on average, 96% identical to the DNA of our most distant primate relatives, and nearly 99% identical to our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos.
What do most living primates have in common?
• Large brains (in relation to body size)
• Vision more important than sense of smell
• Hands adapted for grasping
• Long life spans and slow growth
• Few offspring, usually one at a time
• Complex social groups

Most mammals, including pottos and certain other primates, are colorblind-they can’t see the color red. Yet humans and many other primates perceive a full spectrum of color. The color vision that humans take for granted may have evolved in primates because it helped them to pick out ripe red or orange fruit against the green forest background. Color vision may also help some leaf-eating monkey species to pick out the most nutritious green leaves.
Night Vision:
• Pottos and most other “lower” primates are active at night, so it’s not surprising that many of them never evolved the ability to see the color red. Reddish colors are very hard to see at night, even with full color vision. Although the eyes of many “lower” primates are specially adapted for night vision, these animals rely more on smell than sight to find food and communicate with each other.