Primates Evolution Quotes & Sayings

Press on, regardless. — Mary Stewart

Windsor Castle seemed to Luis from without an intimidating pile, an excrescence of centuries of wealth heaped up on a core of medieval brutality. And — Terry Pratchett

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this entire subject is that there are nonhuman primates so close to the edge of language, so willing to learn, so entirely competent in its use and inventive in its application once the language is taught. But this raises a curious question: Why are they all on the edge? Why are there no nonhuman primates with an existing complex gestural language? One possible answer, it seems to me, is that humans have systematically exterminated those other primates who displayed signs of intelligence. — Carl Sagan

A century ago, people laughed at the notion that we were descended from monkeys. Today, the individuals most offended by that claim are the monkeys. — Jacob M. Appel

The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all. — Peter Singer

Washburn has reported that infant baboons and other young primates appear to be born with only three inborn fears -of falling, snakes, and the dark-corresponding respectively to the dangers posed by
Newtonian gravitation to tree-dwellers, by our ancient enemies the reptiles, and by mammalian nocturnal predators, which must have been particularly terrifying for the visually oriented primates. — Carl Sagan

We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia ... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today. — Fred Hoyle

We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. — Marie Curie

There is such sadness in his human eye that Tawaddud almost tells him the truth: that he should never marry a girl who loves only monsters. Then — Hannu Rajaniemi

One general theory for the origin of AIDS goes that, during the late nineteen-sixties, a new and lucrative business grew up in Africa, the export of primates to industrialized countries for use in medical research. Uganda was one of the biggest sources of these animals. As the monkey trade was established throughout central Africa, the native workers in the system, the monkey trappers and handlers, were exposed to large numbers of wild monkeys, some of which were carrying unusual viruses. These animals, in turn, were being jammed together in cages, exposed to one another, passing viruses back and forth. Furthermore, different species of monkeys were mixed together. It was a perfect setup for an outbreak of a virus that could jump species. It was also a natural laboratory for rapid virus evolution, and possibly it led to the creation of HIV. Did HIV crash into the human race as a result of the monkey trade? — Richard Preston

In describing someone's character, I reveal my own. — Mason Cooley

I'm obsessed with insects, particularly insect flight. I think the evolution of insect flight is perhaps one of the most important events in the history of life. Without insects, there'd be no flowering plants. Without flowering plants, there would be no clever, fruit-eating primates giving TED Talks. — Michael Dickinson

Primates stand at a turning point in the course of evolution. Primates are to the biologist what viruses are to the biochemist. They can be analysed and partly understood according to the rules of a simpler discipline, but they also present another level of complexity: viruses are living chemicals, and primates are animals who love and hate and think. — Alison Jolly

No existing form of anthropoid ape is even remotely related to the stock which has given rise to man. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

And I tell you one thing, if the primates that we came from, had know that someday politicians would come out of the gene pool, they would have stayed up in the trees and written evolution off as a bad idea. — John Sheridan

The quantity and quality of consciousness, one may say, have always been growing throughout geological times. In this respect man, in whom nervous organisation and therefore psychological powers have attained an undisputed maximum, may be considered, scientifically, as a natural centre of evolution of the primates. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

In primates at least, infanticide seems to have been the crucial factor driving the evolution of monogamous mating systems. — Robin I.M. Dunbar

This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly. Sucks to be you, quadruped. Opposable thumbs - don't leave home without them. — Ben Aaronovitch

Incertitude is still hope. — Alexandre Dumas

The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them "self-soothing," but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates - we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees - and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. — Sebastian Junger

Why we can't remember when our mothers carried us inside them: the dark and steady heart, how it was the whole of the world, and no one harmed us, and we harmed no one. — Marie Rutkoski

I would rather be considered an imbecile, than an old fashioned and dry gal. — Mary Sage Nguyen

Our probable ancestors, Homo erectus and Homo habilis -now extinct- are classified as of the same genus (Homo) but of different species, although no one (at least lately) has attempted the appropriate experiments to see if crosses of them with us would produce fertile offspring. — Carl Sagan

The cold in her makes cold in me. — Anna Quindlen

Romance is quite an overblown word. This idea of chocolates and champagne and that's it. There's more to love than that. Romance is quite a soppy word. Love is much more important. — Joanna Lumley

But when I was a little girl, my mom always told me to be nice to everybody, no matter what they looked like or how they treated me, because I never knew who might be an angel God had sent to Earth in disguise. — Jennifer Echols

Our earliest ancestors were descended from primates who thrived for millions of years in a treetop environment, and who in the process had evolved one of the most remarkable visual systems in nature. To move quickly and efficiently in such a world, they developed extremely sophisticated eye and muscle coordination. Their eyes slowly evolved into a full-frontal position on the face, giving them binocular, stereoscopic vision. This system provides the brain a highly accurate three-dimensional and detailed perspective, but is rather narrow. Animals that possess such vision - as opposed to eyes on the side or half side - are generally efficient predators like owls or cats. They use this powerful sight to home in on prey in the distance. Tree-living primates evolved this vision for a different purpose - to navigate branches, and to spot fruits, berries, and insects with greater effectiveness. They also evolved elaborate color vision. — Robert Greene