Sexual dimorphism describes the morphological, physiological, and behavioral differences between males and females of the same species. Most primates are sexually dimorphic for different biological characteristics, such as body size, canine tooth size, craniofacial structure, skeletal dimensions, pelage color, and markings and vocalization. However, such sex differences are primarily limited to the anthropoid primates; most of the strepsirrhine primates and tarsiers are monomorphic. Extant primates exhibit a broad range of variation in sexual size dimorphism , or sexual divergence in body size. It ranges from species such as gibbons and strepsirrhines in which males and females have almost the same body sizes to species such as chimpanzees and bonobos in which males’ body sizes are larger than females’ body sizes. In extreme cases, males have body sizes that are almost twice as large as those of females, as in some species including gorillas, orangutans, mandrills, hamadryas baboons, and proboscis monkeys. Patterns of size dimorphism exhibited in primates may correspond to the intensity of competition between members of the same sex for access to mates–intrasexual competition. Some callitrichine and strepsirrhine primates are, however, characterized by the reverse dimorphism, a phenomenon in which females are larger than males. For lemurs, for example, females’ dominance over males accounts for the reverse dimorphism. Canine sexual dimorphism is one particular type of sexual dimorphism, in which males of a species have larger canines than females. Within primates, the male and female canine tooth size varies among different taxonomic subgroups, yet canine dimorphism is most extensively found in catarrhines among haplorhine primates. For example, in many baboons and macaques, the size of male canines is more than twice as large as that of female canines. It is rare, yet females in some species are known to have larger canines than males, such as the eastern brown mouse lemur . Sexual dimorphism in canine tooth size is relatively weak or absent in extant strepsirrhine primates. The South American titi monkeys , for instance, do not exhibit any differences in the size of canine teeth between the sexes. Wiz Science™ is "the" learning channel for children and all ages. SUBSCRIBE TODAY Disclaimer: This video is for your information only. The author or publisher does not guarantee the accuracy of the content presented in this video. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Background Music: "The Place Inside" by Silent Partner (royalty-free) from YouTube Audio Library. This video uses material/images from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual+dimorphism+in+non-human+primates, which is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ . This video is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ . To reuse/adapt the content in your own work, you must comply with the license terms.

• published: 04 Sep 2015
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