Introduction
Most primates are morphologically and physiologically adapted as frugivores and seek out energy and nutrient-dense foods. Primates have long periods of gestation and nursing and have high encephalization quotients (brain to body ratio), thus requiring large amounts of energy to function properly. The energetic demands of primates’ large brains alone require daily consumption of large amounts of energy-rich foods (Aiello and Wheeler 1995).
Within the diverse parvorder Catarrhini (which encompasses old-world monkeys, apes, and humans), there is a great deal of dietary variability, ranging in degree of folivory (leaf eating), frugivory (fruit eating), granivory (seed eating), and graminivory (grass eating). Lambert and Rothman (2015) state that most primate species are in fact what they call “flexible omnivores,” meaning that not only do primate species switch between different food sources, but that the foods themselves (both food type and nutrient composition) vary based...
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Katherine Smith, B. (2022). Catarrhine Diet. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_466
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