ABSTRACT
The diversity of Asian primates is concentrated in peninsular Southeast Asia and its many islands in the Indian Ocean. Four of the seven major primate groups are found there, lorisids, tarsiers, Old Word monkeys, and apes. Most are extra-large and a few species are terrestrial. There is taxonomic overlap with Africa at the family and subfamily levels, but all the Asian genera are endemic with the exception of macaques. Seven of the eight Old World monkey genera are arboreal leaf-eating monkeys. They include langurs and a group called the odd-nosed monkeys. Macaques are omnivorous frugivores. In temperate northern parts, during the winter some odd-nosed monkeys feed on the ground, where they eat lichen, and Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, hunt for fish and other aquatic life at the shorelines of rivers. Only the arbo-terrestrial macaque that uses both the trees and the ground, one of the most flexible primates, and locomotor specialists, the quadrumanous arboreal orangutans and the brachiating lesser apes, are dedicated frugivores. Several Asian primates are notable for exceptional adaptations:slow lorises that have a venomous bite; the carnivorous tarsiers that have the largest eyes, relatively, of all mammals; and the largest arboreal mammal, the orangutan, which is the only semi-solitary anthropoid primate.
