Cienciaes.com: Apes with their own names. We spoke with Manuel López González.

2009-04-25 04:12:46

To see a primate there is no better place than our own home, in front of the mirror, one of the species a wise man. If we want to observe other members of this great order of species we will have to move. The ideal would be to see them in the wild but it is quite difficult because those that remain hide well and of some species there are so few specimens that they barely survive extinction. There remains, however, the possibility of visiting a zoo and that is what we are going to do today, accompanied by an exceptional guide: Don Manuel López González, wild animal veterinarian.

The word “primate” comes from Latin and means “first.” This was how the great Linnaeus, who was a primate, called them in his famous classification of living beings in 1758. As if this were not enough, he decided to make clear the supremacy of human beings and monkeys over the rest of animals. He called the other mammals “secondary”, that is, secondary, and the rest of the animals “tertiates” (third).

Monkeys or apes, which are household terms for primates, have been classified, in turn, by the shape of their nose. Old world monkeys (Africa and Asia) have downward facing nostrils, separated by a narrow septum. For that reason they are called “catarrinos”, in Greek, cata means down and rinos means nose. American monkeys have a wide, flat nasal septum. dishes in Greek, that is why they are called “platyrrhines”.

Logically, the most famous of the Old World apes are those that have the greatest resemblance to humans: the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the bonobo or the orangutan. These, following our eternal penchant for navel-gazing, we call anthropomorphicthat is, in the shape of a man.

Beyond classifications, there are primates for all tastes: handsome, ugly, big, small, with or without a tail, with a dog’s face or with big eyes and an eternal expression of amazement. Some, like the chimpanzee, are so clever that they make rudimentary tools, others, like the tarsiers, a species very different from ours, are so scrupulous that they never eat food that has previously been handled, handled or bitten by another and only drink if the water is fresh and crystal clear.

Our guest today knows the behavior of monkeys from the point of view of the person who has shared a good part of his life with them. For him, they are creatures with their own names: Muni, the baby gorilla who kept him awake when he cried; Linda, the chimpanzee cook who knew how to make applesauce; Bobo, the one with the prodigious memory or Eleuterio, the expert in escapes.

Today we speak with Manuel López González, wild animal veterinarian. He has been Technical and Health Director of the Madrid Zoo, Coordinator of the zoo of the Selwo (Estepona, Málaga) and Valwo (Matapozuelos, Valladolid) parks and Director of the animals and plants department of Terra Natura (Alicante). In addition to his scientific publications, he is the author of two popular books: “The constipated elephant” and “A gorilla with mumps.”