Animal locomotion many of these same principles may be applied to climbing without trees, such as on rock piles or mountains. The earliest known tetrapod with specializations that adapted it for climbing trees, was "Suminia", a synapsid of the late Permian, about 260 million years ago. Some invertebrate animals are exclusively arboreal in habitat, for example, the tree snail. "Brachiation" (from "brachium", Latin for "arm"), is a form of arboreal locomotion in which primates swing from tree limb to tree limb using only their arms. During brachiation, the body is alternately supported under each forelimb. This is the primary means of locomotion
Divergent evolution in animals insects are believed to be a result of needing the ultrasonic hearing that tympanal ears provide in order to hear predators in the dark. Non-nocturnal insects - that do not need to fear nocturnal predators - are often found to lack these tympanal ears. Animals undergo divergent evolution for a number of reasons. Predators or their absence, changes in the environment, and the time at which certain animals are most active are chief among them. A lack of predators – predatory birds and mammals - for cliff-side nest residing kittiwake caused that particular group of kittiwake to lose their ancestral