New views on primate origins

Most primates live in trees, and many of them have strikingly human‐like hands and faces. Scientists who study primate evolution agree that these two facts must be connected in some way. The details, however, are a matter of debate. Early theories explained the human‐like peculiarities of primates simply as arboreal adaptations. More recent accounts have traced the origins of these peculiarities to more specific ways of arboreal life, involving leaping locomotion, shrub‐layer foraging, visually guided predation on insects, or fruit‐eating.