If you live in North America or Europe, chances are that you have seen a primate. (And yes, meaning a nonhuman primate, not your fellow humans!)  You can go to observe the zany behaviors of a variety of primate species in hundreds of zoos and similar places in the U.S., Canada, Central America, and Europe.  However, most human inhabitants of these regions will not observe monkeys (or lemurs or apes) roaming through their backyard or the national forests like they do in many tropical parts of the world. Wild primates in North America are limited to the Barbary macaques in Gibraltar, a portion of Southern Spain, and several monkey species in certain locales in Central America and southern Mexico. Nonhuman primate viewing for most people in the Northern Hemisphere is done in what is called a captive setting.

The captive setting is highly variable for the primates of North America and Europe.  Primate habitats can be small, just a few metal cages linked together or more elaborate and naturalistic enclosures, covering several acres or more. The environment within these enclosures can be bare, mostly concrete and metal, or very lush, with trees, vines, and large equipment for the primates to play on. Most zoos have changed for the better in the last few years as people have become aware that primates (and many other animals) are highly social animals that need company and lots of room to spread out and exercise.  Many animals, especially primates, also need to be provided with fun games and stimulating activities to keep them busy or they will start to exhibit some bizarre behaviors, like spinning in circles or biting their own fingers and toes.  While it may seem funny to the zoo visitor to see a monkey doing something strange like flipping upside down over and over, this is actually a sign that the animal is not in the best mental health.  To prevent animals from becoming like this, there are governmental regulations in place that require facilities housing primates to give them something called enrichment on a regular basis.

Enrichment is anything that is out of the ordinary for the individuals in captivity. This can be in the form of play toys, often the type that we give to human toddlers, such as big plastic balls, swimming pools, and even stuffed animals. Enrichment often involves some sort of feeding activity where the primates must solve a problem or puzzle of some sort to get at the tasty food.  Enrichment can be something simple like spraying unique scents around the territory or offering novel food, such as orange gelatin or popsicles made from sports drink!  If you go to the zoo and see animals covered in sheets or cardboard cereal boxes strewn about the ground, don’t worry…they are not homeless! It means your zoo is giving enrichment to their animals. Great apes in particular show a huge interest in clothing and large boxes, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see a silverback gorilla draping a shirt on its back or an orangutan covering her head with a giant feed bag.

CAUTION!! Please do not ever throw your personal items into an animal’s enclosure for their (or your own) enrichment.  While you may have good intentions at heart, all enrichment items must be approved by veterinary and zoo staff to avoid potentially lethal consequences of choking or ingestion of inappropriate material.  Not all animals can receive enrichment, and the type of enrichment each animal gets is highly individualized.

Check with your zoo to see if they have a volunteer program instead and maybe you can help make some special enrichment items for your favorite animals!

Photo Op: Here is an orangutan enjoying enrichment at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque.

Primates tend to respond very favorably to all forms of enrichment and show obvious excitement when the zookeepers set fun items out for them. Although there are still some primates living in very bad conditions in facilities throughout the world, responsible zoo managers do their best with the space limitations of the zoo to balance the needs of each animal in their collection with a desire to make the zoo visit fun for the human primates that pay their hard-earned money to come through these exhibits.

How do you know if you are supporting a good zoo?  Make sure it is certified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.  Any AZA accredited zoo undergoes routine rigorous inspections and is subject to maintaining the highest ethical standards in the fair treatment of animals.  If a zoo loses its accreditation, find out why and make sure the issue is resolved before you pay to go there!  Before you visit, find accredited zoos.

So, we know there are nonhuman primates in zoos, but why aren’t any of these guys wandering about naturally in the northernmost parts of the world?  Would you believe that the United States and portions of Northern Europe once were teeming with tropical life, including a variety of species of primates? Primates roamed the north during the Eocene epoch, 55-36 million years ago. During that time, the habitats of Europe and North America were warm and tropical, and most of the primates of that day resembled modern prosimians or tarsiers. (To find out more about these types of primates, scroll below to the Fossils section!)  These populations of primates gradually started going extinct as the climate began to cool and dry out, around the start of the Oligocene epoch (36-24 million years ago).  By the end of the Oligocene, these primitive primates were gone from Europe and almost gone from North America.

After the Oligocene came the Miocene Epoch (23-5 million years ago). The Miocene was a time of climate change as temperatures around the world began warming again, and parts of Africa changed from warm and humid to hot and arid. As time progressed, a pattern emerges in what we might call a true Planet of the Apes, where many species of primitive apes were abundant all over eastern Africa, Asia, and southern parts of Europe. These apes had plentiful food and high fertility rates, making them quite a successful group of species. However, around the end of the Miocene, for reasons not quite understood, apes started decreasing in numbers and diversity, and monkeys began increasing in numbers, gradually replacing all the apes of Europe and also many apes in other parts of the world. Monkeys lived in Europe for millions of years until the middle of the Pleistocene (~15,000 years ago), when they could not escape a large extinction event that affected many animals worldwide–an event spurred by more climate changes and human emergence as dominant predators.

Although it is clear that monkeys and apes were ranging across Europe in the past, what was happening with the anthropoids in America’s history is not understood since their fossils are rare and generally only found in South America and parts of the Caribbean. Current studies suggest that it is unlikely there were ever monkeys naturally ranging further north than Mexico, or that there were apes in any part of the New World, though this belief is based on a lack of fossil evidence at present, which can always change with a new find.

Primate Groups of the Northern Latitudes

Prosimians

None living. All were extinct from the northern latitudes by about 24 million years ago.

Monkeys

Barbary Macaques (Macaca sylvanus): The general features of macaques are described in the Primates of Asia sections, since all but one (the Barbary) are found in Asia. Barbary macaques are sometimes referred to as Barbary Apes, probably because they are missing a tail. (Why lose a tail when it seems so handy? Visit the Primate Anatomy files for more on that.) The lack of tails does not place them in the ape category, however, since they are definitely macaques in every other way.

In Europe, the Barbary macaque is found only on the Rock of Gibraltar at the tip of southern Spain. Whether this lone group should actually be considered “wild” keeps some scientists a little cantankerous, since there is some evidence that the monkeys were brought to Gibraltar up from Africa by humans.  This would make them an artificial group that would not have existed without people’s intervention, and so not “wild” by true definition.  However, other scientists point to evidence that supports the idea that these macaques are the remnants of a large population of Barbary macaques that roamed much of Europe during the late Pleistocene before going extinct, around 10-20,000 years ago.

Monkeys can be found in Central America, and they vary in size and appearance from the tiny Red-crested Tamarins weighing barely more than a pound and resembling tiny squirrels with flattened faces, to the large Black-Handed Spider Monkeys (almost 20 pounds) that are well known for their long arms and tail-hanging antics.  Northern Gray-necked Owl Monkeys, White Throated Capuchins, Red-backed Squirrel Monkeys, Mantled Howler Monkeys, and Black Howler Monkeys can all be found in parts of Central America as well.

Apes

None living. See the fossils section below for more about the apes of the Miocene. What about the Bigfoot or Sasquatch, all you conspiracy theorists may be asking? Visit the Infamous Primates section for more on this notorious creature.

Humans

Human diversity is the norm for most areas of North America and Europe where in any busy city one can find members of nearly every cultural identity, including people who identify themselves as Asian, Black, Caucasian, Hispanic, and Indian. The predominant languages spoken are English, French, and Spanish, and many different cultural traditions are practiced throughout the region. Most countries of North America and Europe are industrialized, meaning that the people use machines that run on nonrenewable energy to do most of their labor.  Technology and medicine are currently the most profitable industries in these regions.

Fossils

Despite the relative lack of living nonhuman primates, the fossil record for the primitive primates of the Eocene (about 50 million years ago) is relatively rich in North America and Europe. In terms of body size, most of these early primates were at least two pounds or more, though a few small primates the size of chipmunks did exist at that time. The primate fossils from North America and Europe can be placed into two main groupings, the Notharctines and the Adapids.

Notharctinae: The Notharctines are known by fossils primarily collected from North America. These animals most likely resembled the lemurs and indrids that live on Madagascar today, with long noses and small eyes, indicating that they were diurnal, in other words up and at ‘em during the day.  They also had elongated pelvic bones and long, powerful legs, indicating that they leaped through the forest ‘con mucho gusto!’  Most Notharctine fossils have been found in North America in the large Eocene deposits of Wyoming and New Mexico.

Adapidae:  The Adapids are known from Eocene deposits in Europe. Unlike the Notharctines, the Adapids had shorter legs and large fingers and were probably more like the slow-moving lorises we have now in Asia, moving through their environment by slow and steady climbing, rather than leaping. Slow and steady wins the race between the hare and the tortoise…though not necessarily in the case of these quite extinct animals, I suppose.