All animals digest their food, carry on gas exchange, excrete waste, circulate nutrient and waste products to and from the cells, coordinate their movements, protect themselves, and reproduce and disperse the species. The more complex animals have organ systems to carry out these functions; in simple animals, these functions sometimes are carried out by specialized tissues. | , rat-size animals with a snout, claws, and sharp front teeth. By 50 million years ago, however, primates had evolved characteristics suitable to move freely through the trees. The first primates were prosimians (meaning "premonkeys"). They are represented today by several types of animals, including the lemurs. Monkeys, along with apes and humans, are anthropoids. Monkeys evolved from the prosimians about 38 million years ago, when the weather was warm and vegetation was like that of a tropical rain forest. There are two types of monkeys: the New World (South America) monkeys such as the spider monkeys, which have long grasping tails and flat noses, and the Old World (Africa) monkeys such as the baboons, which are now ground dwellers and lack such tails. Ape (gibbon, gorilla, and chimpanzee) evolved later. The human lineage split from that of the apes occurred about 5 - 10 million years ago in Africa. Figure 29 shows some of the primates. Figure 30 illustrates the chimpanzee anatomy, which is virtually identical to the
