Lemur Research The Lemur is a very intelligent primate, and there is plenty of research out there to back that up. Lemurs might hold the key to human hibernation necessary for Mars missions. Continue Reading. Even though most pet lemurs that are sold in the United States are bred in the United States, this does not make the issue any less serious. Lemurs are one of the more overlooked groups of primates. This article addresses a related, but different, issue – one that’s even closer to home: the pet lemur trade right here in the United States. They share many characteristics such as greater reliance on their sense of smell. They also have the ability to hibernate, and researchers are hoping to learn how to transfer that ability to humans. Video, 00:02:25 Could lemurs give clues to human health? This has been a huge drawback to understanding how exactly lemurs apprehend the world; and as researchers devise ways of testing the lemurs’ cognitive skills in ways more appropriate to their own ways of relating to the environment around them, we can hope to gain valuable insight into the kind of cognition that preceded our own unusual way of dealing with information. We can turn to nature for guidance and a potential solution to this challenge. Right from the point at which it was realized—over a century and a half ago—that we have a fossil record, there has been a distinct leaning toward what one might call hominid exceptionalism: the instinctive assumption that, because we are so different today, our own ancestors did not necessarily play the evolutionary game by the same rules that apply to everything else out there. Recent work has uncovered such an ability in animals that are evolutionarily similar to humans: hibernating primates. — Yet for all the neglect that has been lavished on them, the lemurs must occupy a very special place in the heart and mind of anyone interested in the long evolutionary history of humankind. But how can we safely ease humans into hibernation and then bring them back when the time is right, without risking muscle and bone wasting, to name a few challenges? All Lemur species are believed to be very intelligent animals. Many … — They also have the ability to hibernate, and researchers are hoping to learn how to transfer that ability to humans. TNW - Science fiction is shifting into reality. Lemurs share resemblance with other primates, but evolved independently from monkeys and apes.Due to Madagascar's highly seasonal climate, lemur evolution has produced a level of species diversity rivaling that of any other primate group. There is no stress more extreme than the vacuum of space, and we hope our research will contribute to the new RNA-based interventions that are gaining attention and emerging as viable human therapeutics. Science fiction is shifting into reality. Lemurs are less closely related to humans than monkeys and apes. If we could put humans in a state of suspended animation by greatly slowing or even fully halting metabolic activity, we could alleviate issues surrounding space travel: time, health concerns, spacecraft size and supply allocation. Acknowledging this pattern of events entirely changes our perspective on how we became the highly unusual creatures we are. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, YorkTalks 2021 Exploring the psychology of veganism vs. non-veganism: Implications for climate change and the human-animal Relationship Animals who spend the winter in states of suspended animation — hibernation — don’t experience significant muscle and bone wasting. A primate is any member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains all the species commonly related to the lemurs, monkeys, and apes, with the latter category including humans. Subsection Health. Mouse lemurs are more closely related to humans than mice, which are more typically used for research. These physiological challenges are combined with the technological difficulties of sending multiple humans on these long missions where they face logistical complications of packing and allocating enough provisions and supplies, as well as social issues of coping with extreme isolation in deep space. Scientists believe humans and our gorilla brethren diverged from a common ancestor around 10 million years ago. Duke University, “Experiments reveal startling insights into lemur intelligence” at Eurekalert. Almost a third (31%) of all lemur species in Madagascar are now Critically Endangered – just one step away from extinction – with 98% of them threatened, according to the latest update of The IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM. Mouse lemurs are more closely related to humans than mice, which are more typically used for research. My only experience with them was in a small well-run zoo. With humanity’s plans to return to the moon this decade and further ambitions to travel to Mars in the next, we need to figure out how to keep astronauts healthy for these years-long missions. A primate is any member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains all the species commonly related to the lemurs, monkeys, and apes, with the latter category including humans. The Philippine tarsier is related to other primates, including monkeys, lemurs, gorillas, and humans, but it occupies a small evolutionary branch between the strepsirrhine prosimians, and the haplorrhine simians. Kenneth B Storey receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). — What is so interesting though is how they have been able to adapt throughout history to the many changes that humans have imposed on their natural environments. The Conversation UK receives funding from these organisations. PhD Candidate in Molecular Biology, Carleton University, M.Sc. Lemurs are the very beginning of the branch off of the tree of life that lead to humans. They're not as close as chimpanzees but they're still family. This is because, as I’ve hinted, in certain respects they resemble our own remote ancestors of the Eocene epoch, around 50 million years ago. One solution long championed by science fiction is suspended … The scope of data now available for primates from long-term field and captive studies has opened up exciting possibilities for investigating age-related patterns of reproduction. In my last Lemur post I talked about the history of Lemurs, this blog will help you understand the differences between lemurs and the primates that we are more familiar with.When you hear the word primate- you probably think of a chimpanzee and the various species of monkey you’ve seen at zoos. I can speculate what happens next but some creature in the tree was a little smarter and brave lead his troop to. They are part of legends in Roman Mythology. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 “Prosimians,” including lemurs and related species split off from the primate line some 55 million years ago, evolving independently from the line that led to anthropoids and humans. This is because, as I’ve hinted, in certain respects they resemble our own remote ancestors of the Eocene epoch, around 50 million years ago. The term "lemur" is derived from the Latin word lemures, meaning "spirits of the night" or "ghosts". Just like all primates, Lemurs are related to humans. Instead, we are one particular outcome of an active process of experimentation with the evidently many ways there are to be a hominid. January 3, 2021. Not just diversity in body forms and lifestyles, but evolutionary diversity too, with several distinctive families, lots of genera, and huge numbers of species. At first glance, a lemur looks sort of like a squirrel, raccoon, or cat, but these animals really are primates, which means that they are closely related to humans. This matters, because most lemur populations are under huge and increasing pressure in Madagascar. Still, they are clearly not as dumb as these attributes have led many to suppose. Like all of my contemporaries in the English-speaking world, I was initially trained to look upon the biological history of the human family as a single-minded (and implicitly heroic) struggle from primitiveness to perfection. Philippine tarsier-Wikipedia. With humanity’s plans to return to the moon this decade and further ambitions to travel to Mars in the next, we need to figure out how to keep astronauts healthy for these years-long missions. The scope of data now available for primates from long-term field and captive studies has opened up exciting possibilities for investigating age-related patterns of reproduction. Lemurs need lemurs . For example, we know that spaceflight leads to loss of muscle and bone density, since our bones and muscles do not need to work against the pull of gravity to move us around. Myles Allen, Kaya Axelsson, Sam Fankhauser & Steve Smith in conversation Our lab is also looking into other aspects of how primates hibernate, such as how these lemurs protect their cells from stress, control global gene levels and how they store enough energy to survive hibernation. theconversation.com. Orangutans Applying this lesson from my studies of the lemurs to the very varied human fossil record, I soon realized that our own hominid family is actually no exception. Atsalis S(1), Margulis S. Author information: (1)Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL 60614-4757, USA. My only experience with them was in a small well-run zoo. Humans and Lemurs Index. Space is unforgiving. This lonely state of ours makes it appear logical to reconstruct the story of our evolution by projecting the single species Homo sapiens back in time, in a single, gradually modifying lineage. But in my own particular case, they had an even more significant lesson to impart. — Lemurs are so distantly related to humans they look more like cats . Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Angela Saini - Race, Gender and Power Humans have evolved under a constant gravitational pull — so when you put people into space, strange and dangerous things happen to their bodies. Valuable information on the aging process can be gleaned through broad cross-taxonomic comparative studies that include lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans. Lemurs are classified as prosimians, differentiating them from anthropoid primates, the group to which humans and monkeys belong. Yet because there is undeniably something very unusual about us today—so unusual, indeed, that our species really has radically changed its relationship to nature—it has proven very difficult for paleoanthropologists to perceive our hominid precursors as just another bunch of primates, and to see the process that produced us as merely another example of something that occurs widely among mammals. Until now, primatologists believed lemurs to be primitive, ancient offshoots of the primate family tree, with far less intelligence than their more sophisticated cousins, monkeys, apes and humans. TNW - The Conversation . Unfortunately, more than 70 percent of all lemur species are currently endangered with humans being one of the biggest culprits in their demise. In my last Lemur post I talked about the history of Lemurs, this blog will help you understand the differences between lemurs and the primates that we are more familiar with.When you hear the word primate- you probably think of a chimpanzee and the various species of monkey you’ve seen at zoos. And of course, in one very limited sense this view is accurate; for we are certainly the product of a unique series of ancestors, each of which existed over a definable period of past time. At first glance, a lemur looks sort of like a squirrel, raccoon, or cat, but these animals really are primates, which means that they are closely related to humans. What’s more, it turns out that diversity, even on this eye-catching scale, is hardly unusual among successful groups of mammals. The upshot is that what I’d been taught about human evolution was very far indeed from the whole story, and it was my involvement with lemurs, beginning in the late 1960s, that gave me my very first inkling of this. Yet extensive studies have shown them to be further distant from us than other types of primates. They more closely resemble the primates that existed tens of millions of years ago. Our lab also looks at how microRNAs are … … Created by Bluecadet. 13 December 2015. One solution long championed by science fiction is suspended animation, or putting humans … Science fiction is shifting into reality. If you observe the progression o primates, lemurs are the first adroit tree dweller. Humans tend to focus on apes and monkeys, but lemurs not only share our trait of opposable thumbs, they're also intelligent. The following is an excerpt from Ian Tattersall’s The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack. satsalis@lpzoo.org The scope of data now available for primates from long-term field and captive studies has opened up exciting possibilities for investigating age-related patterns of reproduction. Hibernating lemurs could give clues to human health Hibernation is an extreme resting state where the body's processes slow to the bare minimum. 8. Our lab also looks at how microRNAs are helping animals survive other extreme environmental stresses including freezing, oxygen-deprivation and hot, dry climates. Miranda Chummy is right - lemurs are wild animals. Scientists studying the human tendency to follow the gaze of other people have found a link to the behaviour of lemurs, a distant primate relative. With humanity’s plans to return to the moon this decade and further ambitions to travel to Mars in the next, we need to figure out how to keep astronauts healthy for these years-long missions. 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