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Updated: June 9, 2025
If we consider, for instance, the squirrels, one of the best-known groups of tree-living animals, we find them to be members of the great order of rodents, whose native habitat is the land surface. Though the squirrels have taken to the trees, there has been no adaptive change in the structure of their limbs and feet. The same may be said of almost all tree-dwellers except the lemurs and apes.
The most curious species are the slow lemurs of South India, small tailless nocturnal animals, somewhat resembling sloths in appearance, and almost as deliberate in their movements, except when in the act of seizing their insect prey; the Tarsier, or specter lemur, of the Malay islands, a small, long tailed nocturnal lemur, remarkable for the curious development of the hind feet, which have two of the toes very short, and with sharp claws, while the others have nails, the third toe being exceedingly long and slender, though the thumb is very large, giving the feet a very irregular and outre appearance; and, lastly, the Aye-aye, of Madagascar, the most remarkable of all.
It has decidedly no close relation ship to either of the groups of American monkeys, having six cutting teeth to each jaw, and long claws instead of nails, with extremities of the usual shape of paws instead of hands. Its muzzle is conical and pointed, like that of many Lemurs of Madagascar; the expression of its countenance, and its habits and actions, are also very similar to those of Lemurs.
Notwithstanding the exceptional brevity of the posterior lobes in these two species, no one will pretend that their brains, in the slightest degree, approach those of the Lemurs.
The proportion of brain-case and face does not differ much from that in the lemurs and even lower forms like cats, for the brain has not increased greatly in total mass, though the cerebrum is more convoluted than in the lower forms.
Then the gorillas, chimpanzees, gibbons, orang-outangs and other apes; the baboons and other monkeys; and the lemurs and man were brothers and sisters, or otherwise closely related, and all were descended immediately or nearly so from a common ancestor lower than any. Where is the comfort or gain?
And passing from the American apes to the Lemurs, the dentition becomes still more completely and essentially different from that of the Gorilla. The incisors begin to vary both in number and in form. Hence it is obvious that, greatly as the dentition of the highest Ape differs from that of Man, it differs far more widely from that of the lower and lowest Apes.
Passing to the true anthropoids, or man-like primates and man himself, the first forms encountered are the little marmosets, which are like the lemurs in some ways, but in other respects they resemble the familiar tailed monkeys.
As these retreated southward and became concentrated in a more limited area, such as were able to maintain themselves became mingled together as we now find them, the ancient and lowly marmosets and lemurs subsisting side by side with the more recent and more highly developed howlers and anthropoid apes.
And how great a development could they attain to thereafter? If we had landed here after the great saurians had been swept from the scene, we might first have considered the lemurs or apes. They had hands. Aesthetically viewed, the poor simians were simply grotesque; but travelers who knew other planets might have known what beauty may spring from an uncouth beginning in this magic universe.
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