Primates
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of around 150 primate specimens. These date from the mid-1800s to 1997.
This collection relates to lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans (the order Primates). It contains around 60 mounted specimens, 80 skulls or skeletal remains and two skins. There are also six specimens in spirit and one wax model of a monkey brain. There are good collections of lemurs, New and Old World monkeys, baboons and great apes. There is also some human material (skeletal specimens and some in spirit), which comes under the Human Tissues Act legislation. The collection represents 52 species, most of which are found in tropical and sub-tropical areas of the world. Specimens in this collection have come from Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Sulawesi, Guyana, Suriname, Columbia and Brazil. Some were wild caught, but many come from zoos, including the Scottish Zoo.
The collection contains many examples of primate species now considered endangered in the wild. These include: the black lemur, the diademed sifaka, the black-and-white ruffed lemur, the cotton-top tamarin, the golden lion tamarin, the Diana monkey, the Celebes crested macaque, the drill, the chimpanzee, the orangutan, the ring-tailed lemur, the mongoose lemur, black-handed spider monkey, the white-bellied spider monkey, the southern pig-tailed macaque and the western gorilla.
About primates
There are over 300 species of primates in the world, and scientists are still describing new species. Between 2010 and 2019 there were 36 new species described. Primates are social animals, and they have larger brains relative to their body size when compared to other mammals. - Broader term
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