Hylobatids, orangutans, Pan species, gorillas and the New World atelines may have each evolved suspensory behavior independently in response to local competition from an expanding population of monkeys. Early depletion of unripe fruit in the central core of the tree canopy by monkeys leaves a hollow sphere of ripening fruits, displacing antifeedant‐intolerant, later‐arriving apes to small‐diameter, compliant terminal branches. Evolutionary trends in morphology and inferred ecology suggest that as monkeys evolved to harvest fruit ever earlier in the fruiting cycle they broadened their niche to encompass first more fibrous, tannin‐ and toxin‐rich unripe fruits and later, for some lineages, mature leaves. It may be that larger body masses allow great apes to succeed in contest competitions for highly desired food items, while the ability of monkeys to digest antifeedant‐rich unripe fruits allows them to win scramble competitions. Diet differences among extant species, extant species numbers and evidence of cercopithecoid diversification and expansion, in concert with a reciprocal decrease in hominoid species, suggest intense competition between monkeys and apes over the last 20 Ma. postures with eccentric limb orientations or extreme joint excursions). Precarious, unpredictably oriented, compliant supports in the canopy periphery require apes to maneuver using suspensory and non‐sterotypical postures (i.e. The timing of paleontological events, extant cercopithecine and hominoid ecomorphology and other evidence suggests that many distinctive ape features evolved to facilitate harvesting ripe fruits among compliant terminal branches in tree edges. ![]() Apes, members of the superfamily Hominoidea, possess a distinctive suite of anatomical and behavioral characters which appear to have evolved relatively late and relatively independently.
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