What is the Strepsirrhini clade?
Q: What is the Strepsirrhini clade?
A: The Strepsirrhini clade is one of the two suborders of primates, with 114 species. They are defined by their wet noses, although the Greek name means having a curved or bent nose.
Q: Where can strepsirrhine primates be found?
A: Madagascar's only primates (apart from humans) are strepsirrhines, although others can be found in southeast Asia.
Q: How do strepsirrhine primates see better at night?
A: Their eyes have a reflective layer to improve their night vision, and their eye sockets have a ring of bone around the eye.
Q: How do strepsirrhine and haplorhine primates differ in terms of Vitamin C production?
A: Strepsirrhine primates produce their own vitamin C, whereas haplorhine primates (and ourselves) must get it from their diets.
Q: What types of animals make up the suborder Strepsirrhini?
A: The suborder contains the lemurs and lorises. The modern types probably evolved from the Adapiforms, an extinct group.
Q: What is unknown about the origin of early primates?
A: The origin of the earliest primates, from which both the strepsirrhines and haplorhines (simians and tarsiers) evolved, is a mystery. Both their place of origin and the group from which they evolved are uncertain.
Q: When did primate evolution occur according to genetic analyses?
A: Using this molecular clock, it seems that primates evolved more than 80–90 million years ago, nearly 40 million years before the first primates appear in the fossil record.
