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5.2: Primate Tweets

  • Page ID
    138523
    • Beth Shook
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    Primate Tweets

    Format: In-person or online


    The open-mouthed Hamadryas baboon reveals the diastema between his upper canine and front teeth.

    Author: Kristen Broehl

    Time needed: 60-90 minutes

    Learning Objectives

    • Identify primate anatomy and behavior
    • Accurately describe a primate species

    Supplies Needed

    • Student worksheet and checklist

    Readings

    • Etting, Stephanie. 2019. Chapter 5: Meet the Living Primates. Explorations.

    Introduction

    For this activity, students develop a tweet from the perspective of a primate. The tweets can be in a variety of formats – some may use tweets simply to tell about their day while others use tweets to share creative content. Students have leeway with the type of tweet they write, so long as they follow the guidelines on the worksheet below, including the 280 character limit. The use of relevant images, gifs, memes, emojis, hashtags, etc. is encouraged.

    Example \(\PageIndex{1}\) by Rose Perash

    Some tweets provide life updates. This example conveys that the primate, aye-aye, has rodent-like teeth, eats grubs, and is nocturnal:

    Long night at the office! Feeling as worn down as my rodent-like teeth. Time to nab a few grubs and head to bed before sunup! #yum

    Example \(\PageIndex{2}\)

    Some tweets include variations of the “roses are red, violets are blue” poem. This tweet conveys that the primate, tarsier, is nocturnal, has long tarsals, uses clinging and leaping for locomotion, has huge eyes, and is carnivorous:

    Roses are red

    At night I’m not sleeping

    I’ve got super long tarsals

    For clinging and leaping

    Violets are blue

    My eyes make up much of my head

    I’m completely carnivorous

    So this lizard is dead

    Example \(\PageIndex{3}\)

    Some tweets recount conversations someone witnessed. This tweet conveys that the primate, gorilla, is polygynous, eats bamboo leaves, males are silverbacks, weigh around 400 pounds, and use knuckle-walking locomotion:

    Primate domestic dispute:

    Mom: You don’t need another wife

    Dad: *stares at her while eating bamboo leaf*

    Mom: You already have so many your hair is turning silver!

    Dad:….

    Mom: …

    D: …There’s 400 lbs of me, enough to go around. *Turns away*

    M: Don’t you knuckle-walk away from me!

    Steps

    • Write primate names (gorilla, chimpanzee, tarsier, ring-tailed lemur, etc) on the questionnaire sheets and then draw student names to set partners.
    • Randomly distribute the sheets to the pairs, so that partners and primates are randomly assigned.
    • Ask students to fill out the questionnaire sheet for their primate based on lecture/lab notes, textbook, and websites provided (see “For Further Exploration” below). Some traits on the sheet won’t be relevant to every primate; students can insert N/A as appropriate. Using this information, students will then create tweets, following the instructions on the activity sheet.
    • Read or display tweets, and ask other students to guess which primate it describes, or have students post their tweets on an online discussion board so other students can “reply” with their guesses.

    Review Questions

    1. What are common primate characteristics?

    2. Which kinds of traits (e.g. physical, behavioral, etc.) make it easier or more difficult to correctly identify the primate?

    3. When observing a primate at the zoo or in the wild, which characteristics do you think would be most helpful for correctly identifying the species?

    Adapting for Online Learning

    If this is an in-person lab, rank how adaptable to online learning it would be(mark in bold):

    If applicable, include tips and suggestions on how to adapt this lab for online learning: For online classes, students can complete the activity individually or in pairs, post their tweets to a discussion board in the course’s Learning Management System, and then comment on other students’ tweets with their guesses for which primate is represented.

    For Further Exploration

    This website provides information about various primates: http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets

    Image Attribution

    Ha, ha, ha by Rolf Dietrich Brecher is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

    Primate Tweets Worksheet

    Name: _____________________________

    Partner Name(s): _____________________________

    Primate: _____________________________

    For this assignment, you will be writing a tweet about a primate. The point is to make the tweet educational and creative. You will include a number of facts about your assigned primate, but don’t say what the primate is so that your classmates can guess later!

    Purpose:

    This assignment will serve as a review of important aspects of each primate’s anatomy and behavior. Since it cannot be longer than a tweet (maximum 280 characters, including spaces), you will be forced to choose only a few details to incorporate, meaning you will need to decide which facts are most important. Creative content can also be easier to remember, so try to make these tweets clever or funny enough to stand out in your classmates’ minds!

    Directions:

    First, work with your partner to fill out the questionnaire sheet. This can help you organize your thoughts and decide which facts are significant enough to be included in your tweet. At the end of class, I will ask you to turn in these sheets. Once you have filled out the fact sheet, compose a tweet including some of the information from the questionnaire. Be creative! You can use memes, emojis, poems, rhyming, common tweet formats, jokes, humor, sarcasm, hashtags, etc. However, do not include the name or a picture of your primate – students should be able to guess the primate from the information you provide in your tweet.

    Your tweet should include at least three facts about your primate. Of these three facts, at least one should be about anatomy and one should be about behavior. The other details could be about any other aspect you choose. Also, one of the facts should be something completely unique about your group/clade. Note that your assigned primate may include many species with slightly different anatomy or behavior – in this case, consider what is typical or most common among the species. After you are finished creating your tweet, submit it either in class or online.

    Use the checklist on the back of this page to make sure you included all necessary elements, and then answer the questions below it about group work.

    Checklist:

    ____ Questionnaire completed thoroughly.

    Tweet…

    ____ Is no more than 280 characters, including letters, punctuation, spaces, etc.

    ____ Conveys a minimum of three facts about assigned primate.

    ____ Includes at least one fact about the primate’s behavior.

    ____ Includes at least one fact about primate’s anatomy.

    ____ Includes at least one fact that is a unique feature of primate’s anatomy or behavior.

    ____ Does not include the name or picture of the primate.

    ____ Creatively conveys the information.

    Briefly describe your personal contributions to the assignment.

    Briefly describe your partner’s contributions to the assignment.

    Names __________________________

    Primate: _________________________

    Classification (terminal branch from primate phylogeny): _____________________________

    Anatomy Unique?

    Dental formula: ____________________________________ •

    Features of dentition: ________________________________ •

    Traits of digits: _____________________________________ •

    Traits of orbits: _____________________________________ •

    _____________________________________ •

    Traits of nose: ______________________________________ •

    Body size: _________________________________________ •

    Sexual dimorphism: _________________________________ •

    Other traits: ________________________________________ •

    ________________________________________ •

    Behavior Unique?

    Habitat: ___________________________________________ •

    Locations: _________________________________________ •

    Nocturnal/diurnal: __________________________________ •

    Diet: _____________________________________________ •

    Mating structure: ___________________________________ •

    Social behavior: ____________________________________ •

    _____________________________________ •

    Locomotion: _______________________________________ •

    Other traits: ________________________________________ •

    ________________________________________ •

    ________________________________________ •

    ________________________________________ •


    This page titled 5.2: Primate Tweets is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Beth Shook via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.