ABSTRACT
In spite of the great diversity of the animals comprising the Cercopithecidae, they can be arranged, in accordance with the distribution of structural and physiological characters, in smaller groups in which genera are probably more closely related to each other phylogenetically than they are to the members of other groups. This chapter argues that baboons are often referred to as being lower in the evolutionary scale than are macaques, actually without any real justification, and presumably because they come first in the generic list of Cercopithecidae. One of their arguments in favour of the contention is the fact that the baboon has a brain-weight very nearly twice that of any other member of the family Cercopithecidae. The baboon’s motor cortex is more highly differentiated than is that of the macaque. There remain the Gelada baboon and the Talapoin monkeys, both of which appear to be fairly isolated types in which are conglomerated strange mixtures of cercopithecoid characters.
