Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/Featured log/March 2024

Primates

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Primates is a diverse order of placental mammals which includes monkeys, lemurs, galagos, lorisids, tarsiers, and apes (including humans). Members of this order are called primates. The order currently comprises 502 extant species, which are grouped into 81 genera. The majority of primates live in South and Central America, Africa, and southern and Southeast Asia, in a variety of habitats, particularly forests but also including grasslands, savannas, shrublands, wetlands, deserts, and rocky areas. The exception is humans, which have spread worldwide to every biome. Primates come in a variety of body plans but typically feature large brains, a shoulder girdle allowing a large degree of movement in the shoulder joint, dexterous hands, and tails, sometimes prehensile. They range in size from Margot Marsh's mouse lemur, at 8 cm (3 in) plus a 11 cm (4 in) tail, to the eastern gorilla, at 196 cm (77 in), not including limbs. Primates are also the most intelligent animals and non-human primates are recorded to use tools, communicate with gestures and vocalizations, and have complex social systems.

Primates is divided into two suborders: Haplorrhini and Strepsirrhini. The suborders are further subdivided into clades and families. Haplorrhini contains nine families in four major clades: Cercopithecoidea, containing the Old World monkeys of the family Cercopithecidae; Hominoidea, containing the great apes of the family Hominidae and the gibbons of the family Hylobatidae; Platyrrhines, or New World monkeys, divided into the families Aotidae, Atelidae, Callitrichidae, Cebidae, and Pitheciidae and containing night, howler, spider, woolly, capuchin, squirrel, and saki monkeys, marmosets, and tamarins; and Tarsiiformes, containing the tarsier family Tarsiidae. Strepsirrhini is split between two clades: Lemuroidea, divided into the families Cheirogaleidae (dwarf and mouse lemurs), Daubentoniidae (the aye-aye), Indriidae (wooly lemurs, sifakas, and indri), Lemuridae (lemurs), and Lepilemuridae (sportive lemurs); and Lorisoidea, split between the galago family Galagidae and the loris family Lorisidae. The exact organization of the species is not fixed, with many recent proposals made based on molecular phylogenetic analysis. No species have been recorded as going extinct since 1500 CE, but over 200 species, or more than 40 percent of all primates, are considered endangered or critically endangered.

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Primates
Featured topic
7 articles
Species in Cercopithecoidea
Species in Hominoidea
Species in Lemuroidea
Species in Lorisoidea
Species in Platyrrhini
Species in Tarsiiformes
Contributor(s): PresN

For a few years now I've been working on creating lists of species in different mammal families, as well as parent lists of genera in mammal orders. (If you recall your biology class, the mammal class is divided into orders, are divided into families, are divided into genera, are divided into species. Roughly.) Although this would seemingly work out nicely for topics, the uneven distribution of species makes it difficult for most orders, but in 2022 I managed to get an FT on the animals in Lagomorpha, and now I have a set on the order Primates. This topic consists of the animals in the order Primates, itself containing six subdivision lists (4 superfamilies, 1 parvorder, 1 infraorder. There's no clear difference between these group types.) So, we have the lists of the monkey, ape, lemur, etc. species in the six groups, as well as a parent list "one level up" containing the genera in the overall Primates order. Thanks for reviewing! -- --PresN 21:12, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Note on naming/capitalization: order names, like Primates, are capitalized proper nouns. Normally this is not confusing, because e.g. for the order Lagomorpha, the English term for multiple members of the group is "lagomorphs". For orders ending in "es", like Primates, however, the English plural noun is... primates. So the animals in Primates are primates. I'm following the titling convention reviewers pushed for in the lagomorph FTC. --PresN 21:15, 24 February 2024 (UTC))[reply]