section_path: Behavior/Diet and feeding
section_name: Diet and feeding
paragraph_text: Diet and feeding
  
  Primates exploit a variety of food sources. It has been said that many characteristics of modern primates, including humans, derive from an early ancestor's practice of taking most of its food from the tropical canopy. Most primates include fruit in their diets to obtain easily digested nutrients including carbohydrates and lipids for energy. Primates in the suborder Strepsirrhini (non-tarsier prosimians) are able to synthesize vitamin C, like most other mammals, while primates of the suborder Haplorhini (tarsiers, monkeys and apes) have lost this ability, and require the vitamin in their diet.
  
  Many primates have anatomical specializations that enable them to exploit particular foods, such as fruit, leaves, gum or insects. For example, leaf eaters such as howler monkeys, black-and-white colobuses and sportive lemurs have extended digestive tracts which enable them to absorb nutrients from leaves that can be difficult to digest. Marmosets, which are gum eaters, have strong incisor teeth, enabling them to open tree bark to get to the gum, and claws rather than nails, enabling them to cling to trees while feeding. The aye-aye combines rodent-like teeth with a long, thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. It taps on trees to find insect larvae, then gnaws holes in the wood and inserts its elongated middle finger to pull the larvae out. Some species have additional specializations. For example, the grey-cheeked mangabey has thick enamel on its teeth, enabling it to open hard fruits and seeds that other monkeys cannot. The gelada is the only primate species that feeds primarily on grass.