Prosimian

Prosimians are a group of proto-primates. It includes:
1. All living and extinct strepsirrhines (lemurs, lorises, and adapiforms), and 
2. haplorhine tarsiers and their extinct relatives, the omomyiforms.  

All of them have characteristics that are more "primitive" than simians (monkeys, apes, and humans). On the other hand, they have survived. Therefore we know that their life-style is not directly competitive to that of the higher primates.

First, they are primarily carnivorous. They mainly eat insects, not fruit. They lack full colour vision: they are red-green blind (cannot see the difference between red and green). This has a corresponding advantage in that they can see better in the dark. This is also true of many placental mammals, and for the same reason. Mammals spent long periods as nocturnal animals during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

Prosimians are not a clade (a group of an ancestor and all its descendants), but a convenient term. It is useful to compare their behaviour with that of later primates. Prosimians are not large-brained compared to other placental mammals. They are fairly intelligent animals. However, their brains are much smaller than those of simians of similar size.

Prosimians are the only primates native to Madagascar, and are also found throughout Africa and in Asia.

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Category:Primates