Our closest relative is the Chimpanzee. The Chimpanzee usually has brown or black hair and eyes, correct?
Do any Primates (other than humans) have blue or green eyes?
Do any have blonde hair? Or red hair (other than Orangutans)?
Do we know when we as human Primates started to have variation in hair and eye color?
I mean to say… when was the first human-type Primate with variation from brown/black hair/eye color?
Thanks,
Sakurako
True, except for the occassional albino. There is some variation in the shade of brown/black, but not something you’d notice unless you were around them a lot.
Not that I ever heard of
So far as I know, only the Orangutans have red hair. No natural blondes that I’ve heard of.
However, outside the great apes there are primates with blond, white, and other colors of hair, so presumably greater variation than what the great apes currently have (outside of humanity) is possible. Just not happening right now.
Nope - because hair and eyes don’t usually fossilize.
Presumably, because humans with blond/red hair and non-brown eyes are still the minority (when considering world-wide humanity), the brown/black hair and brown eyes are the “default”. Even so, that variation could have popped up at almost any time since our line and those of the chimp diverged.
Don’t forget that all other great apes are confined to the tropics or near tropics and, AFIK, always have been. So an occasional blue eyed blond would presumably not be successful. There are no (or vanishingly few) natural blonds among native Africans, but there are probably some, occasionally. Or maybe not. Maybe the first step is gradual lightening of the skin and after that has gone on a few hundred generations, the possibility of a mutation to blue eyes or blond hair opens up that was not there before because the general level of melanin was too high. This is all speculation. These are not the simple Mendelian traits that I was taught in HS. It is, for example, possible for two blue eyed parents to have a brown eyed child. Not likely, but possible. Just as it is possible (although very unlikely) for two parents with type O blood to have a type A offspring.
That is impossibe.
They have looked like crazy, but not found any blue eyes and blond hair genes, hence such phenotype is not due to a mutation. It would rather seem that multiple parts of our genome unchanged decide these things under strong influence from environmental factors like sunlight intensity and temperature. These traits are then partly inherited through non-gene mechanisms we have yet to understand.
Sparc
There is a breed of monkeys called “Barbary macaques” that live primarily in Europe and North Africa. They have a wide variety of shades of blonde hair and blue/green eyes.
Well, there’s the blue-eyed black lemur.
The blond capuchin is a primate.
The mandrill has red hair (and blue as well).
The bright red and blue areas are bare skin, not hair. It does have a bright yellow beard, however.
There are lots of primates with yellow, red, or orange hair, notably the Golden Lion Tamarin and the Red Uakari. And there are plenty with blue/pale eyes as well, such as the Indri, found in Madagascar.
See also: the lesula.
So - why are there so few primate species native to temperate climates?
Probably in part because there isn’t a reliable supply of fruit through the year in temperate areas. (Some lower primates are mainly insectivorous, but most primates rely a lot on fruit.) Also, primates have lower metabolisms than most mammals, which might make it more difficult to maintain high body temperatures in the winter.
None of which explains the biology of primate zombies, you understand.
Nonsense. It’s a mutation at OCA2.
Snowflake was also found to have genetic mutations at OCA2.
ETA: Just noticed that Sparc posted the above in 2002. So yes, what he said made sense at the time.
But the primate with variations most like our own are the Gibbons.
Most of the monkeys I saw in both Africa (Tanzania) and in India were brown to light brown. Going by my photos -
In Tanzania, the monkeys’ bare faces tended to be black (like most dogs’ noses), with some pink skin around or above the eyes. The fur was assorted colours - mixes of blonde and black, sort of like a German Shepherd only much less black. Some had a crest of orangish hair fringed with blackish fur. Their eyes, as best I can make out from my photos, are brown or deep gold, and they don’t really show “whites”.
Tanzanian baboons seemed to be more grey than anything, with black faces but golden eyes.
In India, the monkeys around the Red Fort in Agra, for example, have light brown hair, almost red-haired; their skin is pink, almost a European flesh-tone colour although some looked reddish like they were sunburned on their face. Their eyes too are brownish-gold, no white of the eyes visible.
So traits such as hair colour and skin colour seem to be fairly variable by species or type…
There are also some monkeys with multicolored fur, such as a mix of black and white.
