S3E01 - Primates (Primate Evolution) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Jason Wallace (00:00):
Brian, hello and welcome to the gaming with

(00:07):
science podcast where we talkabout the science behind some of
your favorite games.

Brian (00:12):
Today, we're going to discuss primates by green
butterfly games. Hey, welcomeback to gaming with science.
This is Brian. This is Jason.And wait, we've got some other
people here.
Will and David, you're back!

Will (00:27):
We're back.

David (00:28):
Can't get rid of us,

Brian (00:30):
no. Well, not that we would want to actually, this
whole reason that this entireepisode happened is actually
your fault, so please explainyourself.

David (00:38):
Oh, that's true. We this game was sent to us. We were
sent it as a gift from one ofour listeners, yeah, oh, we
should have, we should havelooked up who it was that sent
it to us. That would have beenreally good to get the name.

Thank you, anonymous. Listener of another
podcast,

Brian (00:54):
common descent. Listener, whoever you are, thank you and
make yourself known. You guysgot a game, and you said, Well,
we know some people who want toplay, who like to play science
games, and you approached us,which is totally different,
because that's not how thisworks around here. We usually
have to chase people down.

David (01:08):
We got the gift. I think it, I think we received it
shortly after the last time werecorded with you guys.

Brian (01:15):
Oh, wow.

David (01:16):
And it was a really cool because it's the it's a perfect
game for your podcast?

Brian (01:22):
Absolutely.

David (01:24):
We thought it would be super fun, and so, yeah, it was
one of the first things we didis we said, hey, do you guys
want to play this you want tocome back and play this game
with us?

Brian (01:31):
Yep, and we did, and it was fun. And we even did it the
weekend of the museum meetup atFernbank, which, again, is going
to date this episode, butwhatever, that's fine. We're
releasing this episode that willalso be our episode that's
closest to Darwin Day. So it'salso a good game for Darwin Day.
So I'm excited to talk aboutthis game. It has a huge amount
of science content, and I'mexcited about the conversation
we're going to get to have aboutprimates and how they're weird.

(01:53):
But before we get into that, whydon't we do a little bit of
science banter? Anything youguys would like to talk about?

Will (01:58):
One that's on my mind because I literally just
finished taking notes on it forone of our news sections, which
will come out before this. So itwon't be, I won't be spoiling
our news. There was a study ondung beetles that have evolved
to be necrophageous. So eatingdead bodies,

Brian (02:16):
Did they roll them up into little balls?

Will (02:18):
Yeah. And this is a thing that I was aware of. We talked
about this in the decomposingepisode, there are beetles that
basically roll up a bit of ameatball and roll it away, bury
it and let their young feet offof it,

Brian (02:30):
okay,

Will (02:30):
instead of dung, yeah, meatballs.

Brian (02:33):
That's a different meaning of meatball. Yep.

Will (02:37):
And there was, there's a group of dung beetles that have
evolved to do this, and theystudied it by finding those
underground

Brian (02:48):
meat?

Will (02:48):
open like like like burrows that they used to there
are Ichnofossils, trace fossilsof these burrows that have
preserved. And you can tellwhich kind of beetle does it,
because they build the burrowdifferently. And so they were
able to figure out the timing ofthe evolution. Because
originally the idea was that,well, when the big herbivores

(03:12):
that the dung beetles wereeating the dung of died, they
had to switch to something else.And so during the megafaunal
extinction not too long ago inour earth's history. That must
have been when the beetlesswitched over. But when they
looked at the dating, it foundout no they were eating meat
well before the big herbivoresstarted dying out. So what it

(03:35):
seemed is more likely, is therewere so many herbivores and so
much dung and so many dungbeetles that competition for
some dung beetles to have tostart doing something
differently, because there wastoo much competition and too
much to go around. So theherbivores now were just feeding
dung beetles while alive andthen flesh eating dung beetles

(03:56):
while dead.

Brian (03:59):
What an unusual form of niche partitioning, and also
meatball trace fossils!

David (04:04):
Yes, yeah. Cool.

So which, which megafauna mass extinction. Was
this? Is this like dinosaur massextinction, or is this like
10,000 years ago massextinction?

Will (04:14):
Yeah, yeah. The 10,000 the 10,000 years ago with the
mammal, megafauna, massextinction. This was a study
focused on South America. Sothis would have been a lot of
the American big animals thatwould have been these dung
beetles, would have been livingalongside of, of, like big
marsupials and things like that.

Brian (04:35):
Were there coprophagous organisms that are known from,
like the Jurassic I know we liketo talk about how sauropods must
have been crazy ecosystemengineers, but they must have
been producing huge amounts ofwaste.

David (04:49):
There are dung beetle fossils in coprolites in the
fossil record. I think they goback to the Mesozoic, although
I'm off the top of my head, I'mnot sure. But there are specific
there are dung ball fossils,like coprolites that are
specifically rolled up intoballs and have often dung beetle

(05:12):
larval burrows inside

Brian (05:14):
interesting. So I would be it would be absolutely insane
if basically, the origin of dungbeetles corresponds with
sauropods. Because, of course,

Will (05:25):
when it's like someone was definitely doing the job, I just
don't know which group ofinsects it was, because how
could you not take advantage ofthat?

Brian (05:33):
All right, what about you, Jason, you said you found
the thing too.

Yes. So I was looking at things about
primates, and I found one abouthumans recently, which were
primates. So that counts. Thiswas a recent one on our peak
energy expenditure. Sobasically, there's the question
of, what is the capacity forhuman like endurance, like, how
much, many calories can youactually burn sustainably? And

(06:00):
so they took a bunch of like,high endurance performance
athletes, like people that aredoing all sorts of crazy
endurance feats, and they gavethem a bunch of labeled heavy
labeled isotopes, okay, heavyhydrogen, heavy oxygen. So they
could trace it, you

Brian (06:15):
got to have that nice, sweet heavy water.

Yes. So and again, I don't know all the
details, suffice to say, letthem determine how much they
were metabolizing, how much theywere how many calories they were
burning. And they found that forthese extreme athletes, the
limit was about two and a halftimes their basal rate. So your

(06:35):
basal metabolic rate is how muchyour body burns when you're just
lying there. It's how much ittakes to pump your heart and to
breathe and to maintain yourorgans and such, and they've
known that. So in short bursts,you can go up to like, 10 times
that amount if you're doing likea super, like a super endurance
run, like, I know someone whodid a 24 hour run. I think he's
a little crazy, but he did it.

Brian (06:57):
I'm sorry. What?

you run for 24 hours. That's that's the goal.
No You don't

David (07:03):
thank you. I don't want to run. I don't want to run for
24 seconds. Yeah.

The thing is, when you do that, you're
actually burning calories fasterthan you can metabolize them in
you cannot digest food fastenough to replace those
calories. So that's notsustainable. So they found that
over the course of like sixmonths, as these people were
doing their hyper endurancestuff, it averaged out to about
two and a half times, and thatwhen they were performing their
really high endurance stuff,they subconsciously cut down on

(07:32):
other things like fidgeting orwalking around or other stuff.
So they cut back on their othercaloric expenditure in order to
keep it to about that amount.And the hypothesis is that
that's about as fast as you canactually metabolize calories,
because it takes calories todigest your food. And the
thought is that about two and ahalf times your basal rate is
probably as much as you canphysically ingest and absorb at

(07:56):
your peak. And so that's thehypothesis anyway. Obviously,
there's other stuff to beproven, but they they seem to
have done some good work. So,okay, this is the limit of how
far over the long term you canactually burn

David (08:07):
Interesting, interesting. Bad news for speedsters.

Yeah, then you just tap into the speed force.
And that's a force, a source ofinfinitre energy right?

David (08:15):
This is why the Flash has the Speed Force is to overcome
force is actually physiologicallimitations? Yes,
I'd be fascinated to know, and Idon't know how we would do this,
but to see what that kind ofstudy would find in other
species, is their version ofthis? Different? Are they able

(08:40):
to maintain a higher activitylevel.

Brian (08:44):
So I think the best surrogate for this study is
probably cats.

David (08:49):
Yeah, well, and dogs are interesting. I was gonna say
dogs, because cats, even modern,even wild cats, are not very
active animals like lions arefamous for they sleep like 18
hours a day or something, right?They really are "rest most of

(09:10):
the day and then do some burstsof activity". Dogs, I think,
would be an excellentcomparison, because dogs
actually have a lot of the samephysical adaptations as humans,
for mobility and for travelingand for covering long distances.
They're cursorial animals, as weare. And dogs would also be

(09:31):
nice, because you can train adog to do whatever you need it
to do for this.

Brian (09:36):
Cursorial means running?

David (09:39):
Cursorial means adapted for running. So horses are
cursorial dogs and wolves, allcanines are cursorial and common
adaptations you see across thosethree groups include large lung
capacity certain types ofthermoregulatory. Very you know,

(10:00):
we sweat, dogs pant, these veryparticular adaptations for
maintaining body temperature andthe shape of our legs. Dogs,
horses and humans, all have verylong legs that tend to also be
very thin. One of my favoritethings to compare if you if you

(10:20):
have a cat and a dog handy, andyou look at the shape of the
limbs and a cat and a dog, doglegs almost all the muscles up
on the top, and then it becomesthis stick toward the end. And
the fingers on the paws are longand in and narrow. The foot is
sort of long and narrow. If youlook at a cat, their arms tend

(10:45):
to be muscular all the way down.Their arms are much more
flexible and their paws are alittle bit wider and shorter,
because cats are grapplers.Yeah, cats are using their arms
to wrestle and grab and pull dogarms are really built to do one
thing, and that is to walk. Thatis to move. And they're really

And so humans would be the only cursorial
efficient at it.
primate. Yes, like I've seenother primates try to run, it
doesn't work out so well.

David (11:18):
No, we are actually. There's a bunch of hypotheses
that we are specifically adaptedfor running, not just for
walking on two feet, but thatsome of the anatomy of our
especially our lower bodies, isspecific, not good for walking,
but specifically good forrunning. We are running adapted

(11:41):
primates.

Brian (11:42):
Well, I don't think we could ask for a better
transition into the discussionto this game, so I think we
should take advantage of thatand and start talking about
primates the board game. I'mgoing to start by introducing
the game. We're going to, youknow, deal with that particular
challenge and how the gameworks. And then we're going to
jump into a conversation aboutwhat is a primate, where did
they come from, and how do werelate to the rest of them? As

(12:04):
you know, weird, very weird,bipedal primates. Okay, so
primates is a game that wasdesigned by Derek Coons. I
looked this person up a littlebit. So he is a graduate of
Miami University in Ohio,another computer scientist
person who made his way intoboard games, but actually was

(12:24):
one of the founding members ofMercy for Animals, so very
interested in sort of animalrights and that aspect, which
actually you can see some ofthat reflected in the game. So
I'm not sure what inspired thecreation of primates, but I'm
very glad that it did, becausethis is an incredibly detailed
game about primates and primateevolution. So what does the game

(12:46):
look like? You have a it's avery space hungry game. Let's
start with that, like when weall sat down to play, it took
the majority of the table tosort of just lay this out. And
there's a reason for that. Youhave a large, beautifully
illustrated, simplifiedphylogenetic tree of the history
of primates. It's split downinto six major branches. The

(13:09):
reason that the board is so bigis you've got six different
groupings of primates, and theseare regular playing playing,
regular size playing cards. Soyou can kind of imagine, if
you're going to stack up six ofthese side by side, it's just
going to take up some space. Youhave slightly oversized cards as
well that are going to representextinct primates. So the tree is
split into six groups. We'regoing to come back and we're

(13:29):
going to talk about all thosegroups later. In more detail,
you've got oversized, chunky,wooden meeples representing, I'm
trying to remember what all ofthem were. There's an orangutan,
for sure. I think there's a bushbaby. There's definitely a lemur
in there at some point. Or maybeit was a tarsier, I don't know.
I'm sure they were trying topull from across the primate
family tree.

I will say the meeples are the best part of
this game. They are the mostadorable meeples I've ever seen.

Brian (13:57):
They are very good. So the board is a phylogenetic tree
of primates and how they relateto one another, but it's also
representing a real, physicaltree at the same time. So the
goal of the game is to take yourlittle meeples, and you're
moving them up the branches tothe top of each of these six
different extant primatefamilies. When you get to the

(14:18):
top, you get to take one of thecards that is there, and that
card will represent a member ofthat family, and usually will
tie it to a specific ability. Sofor instance, orangutans, if you
get the orangutan card under thegreat apes, it has an ability
called tree swaying, which letsyou jump from branch to branch
on the phylogenetic tree, whichwe think is a wonderful

(14:38):
representation of that ability.There may be things that are
affecting their ability tocollect food, or stuff like
that. Positioned on the tree,you'll have little primate skull
icons that are representingextinct primates along those
different lineages. And you'realso going to populate with
different sort of food tokens.And there are, I think it's

(14:59):
animal protein, there's plants,fruits, and then there's like a
wild card that's supposed to be,like, saps or exudates or
something like that. I thinkit's a wild card because
sometimes you're lickinghoneydew, which is just what
comes out of the back of aninsect. So it's kind of
vegetable, it's kind of animal,it's both. It's a wild card,

post processed vegetable.

Brian (15:20):
Yeah so let's see the movement of your primates up the
tree is actually something whereyou it is a roll to move, kind
of it's still very strategicallychoice. It's not Candy Land. So
you're going to roll three dice.They have either one, two or
three on them. You can eithermove all three of your little
primate meeples on differentbranches, or you can move, use

(15:42):
two dice and move one of youryour meeples, an extra far
distance. When you get to thetop of the tree, you get to
collect a card. The only othermechanic is, if you rest, you
can get these bonus cards. And alot of those have this sort of
if you think about Mercy forAnimals, a lot of those are
about legislation to protectanimals or to protect primates.
Or that's where you'll also getyour set mechanics where you're

(16:02):
trying to collect. You'll getextra points for collecting all
of the primates from China, orsomething like that, or other
sort of interesting groupings.When you collect those, there's
this secondary track called theheart track. You can also get
points from that. Most of yourpoints are going to come from
collecting your primates at thetop, collecting your little
bonus primate sets and yourheart track that runs across the

(16:26):
bottom. And I think that's allthe ways you get points in this
game. Jason, what am Iforgetting?

No, I think that mostly covers it. You've got
your your primary points you getfrom picking up the various
extant or extinct primates.You've got your bonuses, you've
got the heart track, and I thinkyou may have some bonuses for
food at the end. You haven'teaten, but you use the food to
buy various other things. Soit's a resource, but it's also
worth points at the end.

Brian (16:51):
Yeah, usually that's true. Whenever there's some
resource, they usually throw acouple extra points. If you got
a bunch of those sitting around,usually it's only going to be
there to help break ties. You'renever gonna win a game from
hoarding a bunch of like, foodcubes.

Will (17:03):
I don't can attest that's where most of my points came
from. When we played, that waswhere most of my points were
from. Was my leftover food. Oh,okay.

Brian (17:11):
But actually, this is the different from when we played
holotype. Because I think youspanked everybody in holotype.
Yes, that one, I did well. But Ithink in this version, I think
David spanked everybody if I'm,if I'm remembering correctly,

David (17:22):
I think me, Jason and I, I feel if I remember correctly,
we were sort of neck and neck,

yeah, and I honestly don't remember which
one of us was ahead. I alsodon't. I think the difference
was like, Yeah, David and I wereup ahead, and then the rest, you
other two were way behind.

Brian (17:36):
Sorry, I was just enjoying the game. That's my
That's the excuse I always getfor why I lose pretty much every
time we play.

David (17:47):
We sat down before we played. Brian was like, I
haven't played in a while. Sothe classic video gaming excuse,

Brian (17:59):
yeah, this controller is clearly broken.

Will (18:03):
I'm not used to this kind of controller.

Brian (18:05):
So we were playing where if you were putting your meeple
along the traffic, you wererunning up a thing, you'd pick
up all the food along thattrack. That's how we were
playing the game. That is wrong,by the way. It's the only reason
I know it's wrong. Andunfortunately, this is just rule
books are hard to write. There'sa card that I found, and it's
actually for the cheek pouch,which is in an Old World monkey

(18:28):
trait, which gives you theability to pick up all of the
food as you go by, which is theonly way that I found out that
we were doing that wrong.

Yeah, we looked at the rule book for like, two
minutes trying to figure thatout and compare wording at one
place and another. So I'm goingto put that down to poor wording
in the wording in the rule book.

Brian (18:44):
I mean, like I said, rule books are hard to write. They
just are. It was very clear thatyou had to stop on the location
of where an extinct creature waslocated to pick it up. It was a
little less clear about if youhad to do that for food. But
evidently, you were have to, youhave to actually choose to stop
to collect the food. You don'tjust get it for walking by it.

David (19:02):
That's interesting, because that would have changed
it quite all. You would haveended up with a lot less food.
Another thing that I maybe youmentioned this, the game has a
set number of turns.

Brian (19:13):
It's only 10 rounds in a 4-player game.

David (19:15):
It's only 10 rounds. And that was one of that was part of
the logic. Why we figured, oh,it must be you pick up the food
as you go, because otherwiseyou're really food is a really
limited resource.

Brian (19:27):
You'd have to be much more strategic and purposeful
about your movement. But eventhen, it seems like you would
really struggle to get some ofthose more expensive cards. Like
you'd have to actively go forthem. Like, I think the
Gigantopithecus card, I thinkyou're using your food to buy
these extincts that are outthere.

David (19:43):
right, I wouldn't have been able to steal it from will.

Will (19:46):
No, no, that's right. A better game.

Brian (19:51):
I do say that honestly, with the board game, as long as
everybody's playing by the samerules, it's fine, right? And we
were definitely all playing bythe same rules, it just would
have been a little different.

Will (20:00):
Yeah, yeah. Just been a lower point point total at the
end, but the gameplay would havebeen the same,

yeah, for sure. And I will say, like, the
gameplay on this is prettystraightforward. It's like, once
you set up everything, like you,you roll your dice, you move
your primates, you kind of, youcan aim for some things and try
to get them certain ways andsuch. But it's, there's it's not
a super complex game. It's like,we've had some games on the
podcast that are verycomplicated. I'm thinking like

(20:30):
Earth or genotype is fairlycomplex, even in terms of just
how the game plays out. This isa fairly simple game, roll the
dice, move your primates, pickup cards. Doesn't take long to
kind of figure it out.

Brian (20:41):
And like all the best games, the game is fun, and the
learning happens by accident,because when you flip through
entire deck of like, Oh, theseare all Old World monkeys. These
are how they're related to oneanother, and this is how they're
related to Gibbons, and this ishow they're related to this. And
these are the extinct thingsthat came on their line. And
here are the things that theyeat. You're just gonna learn

(21:03):
that by playing primates. Imean, I'm getting ahead of
myself, because I'm gonna comeback to I'm already making my
argument for why i What kind ofgrade you might be predicting
this game is gonna get when weget to that part of the
conversation. But we have twopaleontologists on this podcast,
and we have a game that is aboutevolution, Earth history and
extinct primates. So Will,David, I would like to if it's

(21:25):
okay, we can start talking aboutthe science here. Can you tell
me about the history ofprimates, and in particular, the
primate niche and its history?

David (21:35):
Sure, primates, so in the grand sort of picture of
evolution, mammals get theirstart around 200 million years
ago, right at the beginning ofthe age of dinosaurs. And
primates get their start afterthe age of dinosaurs. So
primates, from our evidence fromthe fossil record and also
evidence from the geneticcomparisons with other species,

(22:00):
it looks like primates reallysort of came into their own
around 60, 65 million years ago,in the aftermath of the mass
extinction that ended the Age ofDinosaurs, the earliest primates
were closely related and verysimilar to some early rodents,

(22:23):
and this sort of group ofmammals that were relatively
small, probably some treeclimbing ability, right? There
are a lot of rodents today.There are a lot of carnivorans,
things like raccoons, that arenot fully tree dwellers, but
they're able very comfortably togo up and down, in and out of

(22:45):
trees. Early primates, includinggroups like the plesiodapiforms,
which are considered to be maybethe earliest primates, maybe
cousins of the earliest primateswere beginning to develop these
arboreal adaptations, right,anatomical specializations for

(23:07):
spending almost all your time inthe trees

Will (23:11):
compared to squirrels a lot?

Brian (23:13):
Yeah, I was just about to say, like, I've always heard
that, like our oldest primateancestors were more like
squirrels than anything else.

David (23:21):
Yeah, and squirrels are a great comparison, because they
are extremely arboreal A and B.You know, being a tree dweller
full time has the benefits ofbeing able to navigate an
environment that not many otheranimals can navigate, being able
to get up off the ground andaway from the many dangers that

(23:43):
can be present on the ground.Squirrels are a really
interesting comparison, becausesquirrels are uniquely adapted
for going up and down trees.Squirrels are famously able to
run, just run straight up anddown a tree. Their I think their
wrists turn outward in a waythat most animals don't. Okay,

(24:06):
so squirrel, it's you think oflike a raccoon will climb sort
of up and they're grabbing andthey're stepping kind of the way
we would. Squirrels can fullyjust run vertically.

Brian (24:18):
That's true. They kind of sprint up a tree you don't see

Will (24:22):
they can also sprint down the tree. Yeah, they can just
move. And their feet also cankind of rotate, so that they
have hands and feet going in allfour directions, so they just
have a four direction grip onthe tree, and can just Velcro to
it.

David (24:41):
Okay, I won't even run down the stairs. Squirrels are
really impressive.

Brian (24:48):
So those early primates, did they have sort of what we
would consider like the primatehand setup, or the early version
of that, with the fingers andopposable thumb?

David (24:57):
Yes, I believe off the top. Top of my head, I believe
in early primates, we seeevidence for the at least the
beginnings of grasping handslike we have, which, again, not
unique to primates, right?Raccoons have that a lot of
rodents have, that thebeginnings of specialization for

(25:19):
plant eating. Early primateswere going after plant foods. I
want to say long and probablyprehensile tails are something
that shows up very early on.There is also genetic evidence
to suggest that enhanced colorvision is something that is

(25:40):
evolved deep in the primatefamily tree. Most mammals have
relatively limited color vision,not black and white, but
basically, most mammals areeffectively color

red, green, color blind,

David (25:52):
color blind, red, green, color blind. Primates are
unusual. Primates are not wehave three we're trichromatic,
right? We can very clearly seereds, greens, blues, etc. That
seems to be something most mostof us, yes, present company
excluded. That's another thingthat evolved early on, possibly

(26:13):
to help identify fruits andother food stuffs that would be
up in the trees.

Brian (26:19):
So our nocturnal mammal ancestors presumably lost one
three color cones, and actually,mammals had to re evolve like
basically, through geneduplication and adaptation, have
re evolved the ability to see inthree colors, if you look at
like birds, for instance, neverlost that original trichromy.

David (26:43):
Most vertebrate animals have better color vision than
really that we do right.Reptiles tend to be three or
four right, trichromat ortetrachromat. A lot of insects
have better color vision. A lotof fish have better color
mammals really did downgrade inthat regard.

Brian (27:03):
We had to get it back. We had to Panda our thumb
back.Pandas thumb our way totrichromy.

Will (27:10):
And some people have hypothesized that that may be
why, compared to like reptilesand birds and insects, why
mammals are so dull, colored.

Brian (27:18):
Oh, why we're so boring

Will (27:19):
that you don't get a lot of brightly red and blue and
yellow mammals, because it's notas useful for us compared to
those other animals that can seethe vibrance of those colors
much better than the averagemammal. So you get a lot of
brown mammals.

Brian (27:36):
and that's why mammals are so stinky.

David (27:41):
And also, if you think about what are some of the
exceptions mammals that areusing Reds and Blues for
display, it's primates, right?It's baboons, it's mandrills,
it's things like that, yeah,

okay, so you say that the primates really got
their start right after theafter the dinosaur extinction,
which immediately brings tomind, like, Okay, that sounds
like they are occupying a nichethat got vacated as part of that
extinction. Is that correct?

Brian (28:12):
I mean, what was there before? Like, there were large
herbivores and large carnivoresand burrowing things and all
kinds of things. Like, was therea primate niche before primates,
or did they invent the nichealongside with the development
of angiosperm trees?

David (28:27):
Well, that is you've hit on. The key point here is that
part of what probably allowedthem to evolve was the loss of
large herbivores and the loss oflarge carnivores, which meant
that there was food to be eatenand safety to be found. But
also, there is evidence tosuggest that before the dinosaur

(28:49):
extinction, forests tended to bemore open environments because
you had all these big herbivoresclearing space and stomping
through the forest. Okay, we seeevidence for denser, closed
canopy forests becoming morecommon after that extinction,

(29:09):
and that was probably a hugeboon for animals like primates
who live in the trees and arespecifically adapted for moving
between trees.

Brian (29:20):
I guess that makes sense when your average herbivore is
the size of an elephant orlarger

David (29:26):
Yeah, yeah, you don't get a lot of closed canopy those
animals stomping around.

Will (29:32):
And you need that. You need that closing of the canopy
to be able to just be a canopydweller. Otherwise, you're going
to have to go up and down trees.

David (29:41):
And there are several lineages of gliding, Mesozoic
mammals.

Brian (29:46):
Interesting, interesting. So another thing, I was looking
through the book, and I didn'trealize this, every one of the
little spaces on thephylogenetic tree has a letter
and a number, and we were tryingto figure it out. And so, like
we decoded what the lettersmean. They're. Coded to the name
of that lineage, of thatparticular branch, including,
you know, before the splits thatoccurred, there's also, they're

(30:07):
numbered one through seven. AndI found out in the book that has
a meaning too, in fact, the it'stied to the to the era in which
that extinct creature would havebeen found, like, if it has the
number six or seven. It's fromthe Quaternary within the last
which is the most recent 5million years. The most recent
anything in five was theNeogene, and anything prior to

(30:29):
that would have been thePaleogene, 66 million to 23
million. So it's actually alsosynchronized to time, which is,
I suppose, great when you'regetting your extinct it shows
you exactly on what branch andexactly what time period it has
to be in right as you're goingup through it. We've got a bunch
of different families ofprimates to talk about, and I
really don't know how we wantto, how we want to narrow it

(30:51):
down. I did think one thing Iwanted to point out is one of
the families is tarsiers. And Ilooked through the tarsier
cards, because the cards havedifferent abilities based on
what the different creatures,the different primates in that
group are. There was only oneability for tarsiers. It was
leaping. There was the onlything that they mentioned was
leaping. Our tars So, so what isa tarsier?

Will (31:14):
Tarsiers are really like they're one of my favorite
groups of primates.

Are they? The oldest branch I'm looking here
at the board, but I don't have agood image of it.

Brian (31:24):
I think the oldest was actually and they did the wet
nosed primates, which iscombining lemurs as well as
lorises and Bush babies, into alarger group,

Will (31:34):
yes, and I don't know which member of them like has,
but it does look like tarsiers,probably is, is one of the
oldest, if not the oldest

David (31:48):
lemurs in in true primates. So the closest
cousins, living cousins ofprimates, are colugos, which are
just outside the group, whichare gliders. Then lemurs are the
out group. So they are theearliest branch of living
primates, lemurs, lorises and soon. Then it's tarsiers, sort of

(32:09):
the next branch in. And theneverything with everything
beyond tarsiers is monkeys. Thenyou're your New World monkeys,
your Old World monkeys. Sotarsiers are the closest
primates to monkeys withoutbeing monkeys, and then lemurs
are one more step out fromthere,

Brian (32:27):
and all the lemurs are in Madagascar. There are no are all
the lemurs in Madagascar?

David (32:33):
Yes, I believe that's true.

Brian (32:36):
Okay, so unlike marsupials, where we do have the
occasional possum who's runningaround there somewhere, like all
of the lemurs are found in oneplace, and their closest
relative, the lorises and thebush babies, are a little bit
more distributed than that,right?

David (32:50):
Yes, yeah. They're in broader Africa, I believe, yeah.

Will (32:54):
And there are, there are some in Asia that I don't know,
which specifically.

Brian (33:00):
The Loris is the only, okay, it's the only venomous
primate is the slow Lori. Sothat's just, it's weird claim to
fame, and lemurs do all kinds ofinsane things. And I mean, I
wish we probably can't reallyspend, like, a ton of time on
it, but the front of the box isthe aye aye, which is one of my
favorite primates, which isabsolutely freaky little lemur

(33:23):
that is basal even to the restof the lemurs, and is is a
primate that is doing the sameecological job as a woodpecker.

Tell me about this. You guys kept talking
about its freaky fingers andstuff, and I have no idea what

Will (33:41):
I will happily take this one, because this is one of my I
love primates. They're so cool.The Aye Aye is a lemur, but it
you're talking about. So explainthis, please.
is extremely specialized. Theyhunt for grubs underneath the
bark of trees, and they do thisusing very sensitive ears and a
very sensitive finger that theytap on the bark. Their middle

(34:05):
finger has elongated into thisvery thin, very still dexterous,
and it's actually almost likeball jointed at the base. It is
extremely dexterous. And theytap on the bark and listen for
hollow spaces. And when theyfind one, they have these rodent
like front teeth that they thengnaw a hole into the burrow or

(34:29):
cavity where the grub is. Andthen they use that long finger,
which has a hooked nail on theend, to reach in and fish out
the grub, and then in eat it andmove on to the next one. And
that's very much whatwoodpeckers do. Woodpeckers find
spots where grubs are going tobe in the wood. Bore into it

(34:52):
with their beak, you know, Peckinto it. They're woodpecking,
and then they have their tongueis long and barbed. To fish out
the prey. So it's very similar system.

Brian (35:05):
So they're both highly derived, and they hit on very
different solutions to the sameproblem based on their starting
materials.

David (35:12):
Yeah, the third finger. So it is the third it's the
middle finger that they're usingto do it. And my favorite thing
to it's, it's very, very long.It is this unusually creepy
looking finger. There was apaper that came out recently
that got a video footage of AyeAyes picking their nose, putting

(35:40):
that finger all the way to thebase, the full finger, all the
way up in there, to get as muchreach as they can, yep, into the
into the throat.

Brian (35:54):
I'm gonna shout out another podcast here weird and
dead, because they did a whole,the whole episode on the freaky
fingers and the nose picking.

David (36:01):
Oh, just, Oh, that's great.

Brian (36:03):
Oh, absolutely, of course they did. That's their whole
jam, right? Gross, the grossthings in biology and evolution
that nobody wants to talk about.There was even some discussion
of, why do they do this? It'slike, I don't know, humans do it
too. Why do humans do it?

Will (36:18):
one of those of, like, super weird for us to think
about doing it. I bet it feelsamazing,

David (36:24):
like a Q tip in the ear. Yeah, just

Will (36:28):
No, itch, you can't get to Yeah.

Brian (36:35):
All right, so we said New World and Old World monkeys.
Okay, so we got to talk aboutthis. We got monkeys in South
America and we got monkeys inEurasia. Those are different
groups of monkeys, right?

David (36:49):
Yes. Generally speaking, New World monkeys are in the new
world the Americas Old Worldmonkeys are on the other half of
the world,

Brian (36:57):
okay, but they're not okay. They but you said, because
of that, phylogenetically, thatmeans that everything between
them is also, if we're going tocall monkeys a group, that means
everything in between them isalso a monkey, right? So they
share a common answer with eachother. But like, where did they
come from? And where did the newto the new world? Are we? Are we
doing some insane rafting to getmonkeys to the new world?

Will (37:20):
Yeah, that does seem like what happened

That's exactly what we're doing. Oh, so this
is, this is not like breakup ofGondwana land or whatever.

Brian (37:26):
No, it wouldn't, because the continents were already
split before primates existed.

David (37:30):
Yep, yeah, yeah. The earliest monkeys in the
Americas, I think, areOligocene, so like 30 something
million years ago, I think, iswhere, where they are, which is
way after the Atlantic Ocean wasnice and wide by that point,
okay, and all the evidencesuggests that the ancestors of

(37:51):
New World monkeys rafted acrossthe ocean at some point.

Will (37:55):
Yeah, from Africa.

Brian (37:56):
There's a ridiculous story to be told there about the
monkeys that rafted across theAtlantic and didn't die.

David (38:02):
There's a chapter in Riley Black's latest book when
the earth was green that depictsa scene of this exact thing
happening.

Brian (38:11):
Okay, crazy.

You got to figure out if there was some group of
monkeys that managed to raft allthe way across. There are many,
many more that didn't.

Will (38:20):
Oh, yeah,

David (38:23):
it probably happened multiple times. This is also
rodents did the same thing. Sothere are the group, I think
it's caviamorphs. The group thatis includes like capybaras and
porcupines. New Worldporcupines, also appear to have
rafted across around the sametime. So for any listeners who
are baffled by what we'retalking about, a thing that we

(38:45):
see happening pretty regularlyin the modern world is you will
get, like a storm, will tear achunk of forest off or
something, and then you end upwith, like a log and a mat of
vegetation, just a big, just abig chunk of floating Trees and

(39:05):
leaves and vegetative matterthat often has animals in it.
And those rafts can go anywhere.And if they make landfall
somewhere, those creatures canthen crawl off and, you know, go
find food and shelter somewherewhere they are this there is
good evidence to suggest thatmany times throughout Earth

(39:27):
history, this process has beenresponsible for taking a group
of animals to a part of theworld that was new to them,

Brian (39:35):
interesting, So then the the ocean currents must have a
huge I wonder if you can infercertain things about ocean
currents. So, for instance,placentals in in Australia
didn't happen. So nothing raftedand survived. But then do New
World monkeys? Did they gothrough some kind of crazy
bottleneck where basically allNew World monkeys are descended

(39:56):
from, like 50 monkeys who gotthere at a certain time or. You
said there have been multipleinstances of rafting?

David (40:02):
Yes, yeah, I think, I think that's from genetic
evidence. Now, we're a littlebit outside of my familiarity,
but it seems like there aremultiple origins of New World
monkeys, which probably meansthat at least a couple of
different populations raftedover.

Brian (40:24):
Let's see. Okay, so that's our New World monkeys,
and this is our spider monkeys,our howler monkeys, our
capuchins, like all what there'sowl monkeys, which I saw, were
the only nocturnal monkeys inthe new world. We got lots of
nocturnal primates everywhereelse, but at least in the New
World monkeys, it's just thoseones. But then we got our Old
World monkeys, and I didn'trealize baboons are actually in

(40:45):
the Old World monkeys. So ofcourse, it makes sense, because
that's where they're from. Dobaboons? Okay? Monkeys have
tails. This is kind of what wewould consider the trait of
something being a monkey, isthat has a tail, right? And I
think we were talking about thecolor stuff, was it you guys who
were telling me about the brightblue and red in a mandrill is

(41:05):
not pigments.

David (41:07):
Yes, yes, structural, yeah, animals generally can't do
blue pigments. So pigments aremolecules in the cells that
express different colors. Uh,mammals can't do red, and
animals, I'm pretty sure animalsin general, can't do blue. And
so blue is structural. Theactual structure of the skin or

(41:31):
scales or feathers refractslight to make it appear blue.
And red in mammals is blood.It's just the tissue becomes
flushed with blood very close tothe surface.

Brian (41:47):
So other examples of structural colors, you'd say
animals, and that even extendsto insects, a butterfly's blue
wings are the shape of thescales, sort of refracting the
light to make it blue, the sameway that the sky is blue because
it's reflect, refracting thelight in such a way to bounce it
around and create blue.

Will (42:05):
Your blue birds and stuff like that are also like, if you
put them in the wrong light,they would stop looking blue,
because it's just a trick of thelight.

Brian (42:17):
Okay, so at this point, there are two groups that we
have not talked about, that arerepresented in the primate
family tree, in the gameprimates. Obviously, it's more
complicated and more diversethan this, and that is the
Gibbons and the great apes, orthe gibbons I've also heard
called as the lesser apes, whichseems really mean to make a
whole group just to put onething into as well everybody,
but not you. You can be your ownside.

David (42:41):
I think historically, they were considered great apes.
And then at some point, as moreevidence accumulated, we
realized that they were an outgroup. And so that's when they
got their own name, the lesserapes, which is a disservice,
because Gibbons are awesome.

Will (42:56):
I feel like someone who came up with that name was one
who would who was extremelyjealous of their ball joint
wrists and went, let's call themthe lesser apes that'll put them
in their place.

David (43:09):
Sounds like they were named by a great ape.

Brian (43:11):
There's a lot of that going around. We really have to
do something about that. Gibbonsare also they're specialist in
their form of movement, right?The brachiation? Like, that's
there they are. Like, I guessthere are. There are other
primates that do it, but nobodydoes it as well. Or is it really
just a Gibbon thing? First ofall, what is it? What is

(43:33):
brachiation?

Will (43:34):
Brachiation is a primate specialty in many ways. We can
brachiate So that is being ableto hang from your arms and swing
and use your arm as the leveryou're swinging by.

David (43:48):
When you do the monkey bars on the playground you go
from hand to hand that'sbrachiation.

Brian (43:53):
gotcha monkey bars or rings, so basically, like half
of gymnastics, exactly.

Will (44:01):
Like that's that's all brachiation. Uh, other great
apes are also very good atorangutans are brachiators, and
they are also primarily treedwellers. They spend very little
time on the ground. Gibbons,though, are not only tree
specialists and extremely goodbrachiators. They're like fast

(44:23):
like Gibbons can chase a birddown in the trees, and they are
moving with such speed andprecision that it just is not
comparable to any other groupthat's doing it, except for,
like, you know, spider monkeys,that move but they're not moving
in the way Gibbons are moving,

Brian (44:41):
because theyre cheating, they've got an extra limb.

Will (44:44):
Yeah, exactly Gibbons are insanely acrobatic, and it's,
it's and because they'reprimates, half the time it looks
like it's just for fun, becausethey are just doing more than
they definitely needed to do toget. From A to B, and watching a
given with the zoomies isfantastic.

David (45:06):
They have zoomies in three dimensions.

Will (45:08):
Yes, absolutely. They put the Z and zoomies. They use that
Z axis.

David (45:16):
Well, it's an interesting point to make, because we've
been talking about how primatesare these tree dwelling
specialists, but there areseveral different methods among
primates about how they do this,right? Great apes do not have
tails, right? Gibbons have anactual ball and socket, wrist

(45:37):
joint. They have theseincredibly flexible arms, so
they're great at swinging andbrachiating. Orangutans are good
brachiators, but they also do,like, what I think is called,
like scramble climbing wherethey are going. They're reaching
across branches. They're sort ofcrawling through the trees with

(46:01):
all four limbs at once? Yes, alot of monkeys have prehensile
tails, so they're effectivelyclimbing with five limbs. Lemurs
are unusual in that they tend tobe they're often vertical
climbers, so their body is sortof upright while they're
climbing. And they're alsoleapers. They jump from tree to

(46:24):
tree and branch to branch. Okay,so even among primates, you have
different styles of climbing andgetting across and through
trees.

Brian (46:34):
Gotcha, which was that tarsier thing, that sort of like
state that leaps, that leap,that way of leaping through
trees?

David (46:40):
Yes, which is part of why, when lemurs are on the
ground, they hop,

Brian (46:46):
which is very fun. If you've ever seen zaboomafoo,
it's the Yes. It's a fun likesideways crab bouncing, yes,
with their hands held up in theair.

Will (46:58):
Yeah. They're no longer good at walking around on flat
ground. They are made fortrunks.

Brian (47:04):
Okay? Gibbons also lack a tail, right? Like, if we were to
say, like, the thing that wesort of ties all the apes
together is that the tail hasbeen, I guess, do we just say
it's lost, or just extremelyreduced,

David (47:15):
it's effectively lost? Yes, I don't think any apes have
a functional tail at all, evenwhen, like humans, occasionally,
a person will be born with atail. But tail is in quotes
because it's really just like anact, like a little nub, okay, at
the base of the spine.

Brian (47:37):
So tail loss is that actually, okay? Wait, is it tail
just an extension of the is atail made up of vertebra, or is
it a different set of bones?

David (47:45):
It is, it is vertebrae. It's often differently shaped
vertebrae. So you can tell in alot of animals, if you're
looking at a tail vertebraversus, you know, trunk or neck.

Brian (47:55):
Is that a snake? Is that a snake thing, too? David, yes,
snake.

David (47:59):
You can see, you can identify a tail vertebra by
itself. Yeah, a tail is actuallydefined by being an extension of
the trunk, okay, past the buttthat is made of bones and
muscle, but there's no organswith it. Okay, interesting. So

(48:19):
all of our organs are in thebody wall, like within the core
of the body. A tail is anextension of the body, muscles,
vertebrae, but no more organs,and it is beyond the butt.

Will (48:30):
This is why a lot of your arthropods that have tails
aren't actually like a scorpionstail is just its abdomen. A
scorpion poops out of the tip ofits tail right before the
stinger? Oh, no, yep, thestinger tail is full of organs
that. So that is not actually atail. That is just a long body
that has been made into a taillike structure.

Brian (48:53):
I am. There's that horrible pun that I'm building
in my head, and I haven'tfinished it. So anybody feel
free to pick this up. But it'slike bed butt and beyond
but anyway, so, so it's

David (49:07):
Bod butt and beyond, yes.

Brian (49:09):
There we go, body butt and beyond.
So we actually then prime we,because we are also apes and
graded specifically, haveliterally lost vertebra, like
it's just, it's just gone, likewe don't make them anymore.

David (49:26):
we've also lost teeth,

Brian (49:28):
yeah, I guess that's true.

Will (49:29):
Yeah, shortened our snouts down.

David (49:31):
Okay? Dental count,

Brian (49:33):
so we have fewer teeth than other other great apes, or
just other primates,

David (49:37):
other mammals, okay, other mammals.

Brian (49:41):
So great apes that you know, I bonobos and chimps are
considered separate now, right?I know that they weren't when I
was young, but now we considerthem two different species,

David (49:51):
Yes, yes, they're both in the same genus. They're Pan
correct?
Okay, so chimps and bonobos areour closest cousins. So the
great ape tree. Is orangutans onthe outside, right the early
branch, then gorillas, thenchimps and bonobos, and then
side by side with chimps andbonobos is humans, the hominins.

Will (50:13):
And we can see there that the great apes arrive from best
to worst.

David (50:22):
Yeah, no, that's you pretty much got it. Primates
prime, like a, like a pop, asuccessful film franchise. They
really nailed it on the firstone, and then they just been
trying and failing ever since

Will (50:36):
I like the sequel. Gorillas, real cool. The sequel
is good. I lost interest afterthat.

Brian (50:43):
Hey, man, I love orangutans, right? I think we
might have a little bit ofredhead bias over here,

Will (50:51):
but long arms and red hair makes me biased. I don't know,

Brian (50:56):
but the one thing I like, Okay, so let's actually look at
how it's represented in thegame. So remember, every one of
these creatures that's in thegame has a card that's
associated with it. They havebasically a portraiture of a
representative of that species.So there is several different
subspecies of chimpanzee,gorillas, orangutans, and each
of those have a differentabilities. Now, in great apes,

(51:19):
there is a card for human. It isnot one portrait. It's actually
a collection of portraits. Thereis no ability that's
specifically associated withhumans. There is no benefit to
collecting the human card.

David (51:32):
You can be human and you're you just get an extra
feet and that's it. You don'thave any special abilities.

I mean, given how many specialized adaptations we
have. I think that's anoversight.

Brian (51:42):
I think it was clearly not it was it. It was an active,
conscious choice. It's like weare not going to pick a person
to represent all of humanity,and we are not going to pick an
ability that represents all ofhumanity. We're just, we're
basically kicking it down thecurb. We're not dealing with it.
Here's your human you're in thegreat apes. You can collect it
if you want. I don't thinkthere's any bonus points that

(52:03):
lets you get you get forcollecting humans. It's like, we
can't leave them out, becausethat's wrong, but we're also not
gonna let them be the same aseverything else.

You make it sound like they were so grudgingly
included.

Brian (52:15):
It's like, I think they were, I kind of, I'm not
kidding, yeah, I think we'relike, well, we can't leave them
out, but we're not going to putthem in the game in the same
way.

David (52:25):
I think the choice to have a collage instead of a
single portrait image is anexcellent choice. Yeah, I think
that's that's always that's sucha difficult because once you
start talking about humans,you're in culture territory, and
you're in modern culture, andhow do you pick a single living
culture to represent the entirespecies that you make it a

(52:47):
collage, you skip that issuelike doing an ancient human
might have been the only way toget around that of like and even
then, if you're depicting themas they once lived, yes, are you
in? Are they based on particulardemographics, living human? How
are you but

Brian (53:07):
you're forgetting. The obvious solution is, you make
them yellow. You just goSimpsons,

David (53:14):
that's true. Or Lego, yes, you just make it a lego
person.

I think we could have had some special abilities,
tool use, endurance running.That's true.

Brian (53:22):
Actually, you're right. Bipedalism actually would have
been a very easy thing to gowith, which is worth talking
about, because I know we've alldone this. Look at your feet.
They are hands, I'm sorry, andit's weird, like primates have
four hands, and we tried to turnthose hands into feet, and we
walk weird. So weird compared toeverything. I don't, yes, what

(53:45):
else can you say this? Humanswalk weird. We just do,

Will (53:49):
yeah, no, I absolutely think that should have been the
ability, and it could, it couldhave had some mobility thing of
like, you get to you get to reroll a low dice when you want to
move, and you get to movefarther, because you're a long
distance traveler, like that'swhat humans are good at.

David (54:05):
If I didn't know you mentioned the cheek pouch thing,
you could also have done thesame thing with that, because
your hands are free,

Brian (54:15):
yeah, for sure, yeah.

Will (54:18):
I definitely think that's a little bit of an oversight. I
can, I'd like the DND mentality.I get potentially where they
were coming from, but thatdefinitely feels like it's
missing.

Brian (54:29):
Yeah, I think, you know, bipedal and tool using
specialists. I mean, that'sjust, I mean, that's, that's
what we are. You gotta explainwell. And there's a couple other
things, like highly vocal humansare incredibly vocal. But you
know, not everybody I understandwhy they didn't do it. So I
guess, okay, I'm already into mynitpick territory. You could

(54:49):
have given humans something,right? Yes, okay, that is pretty
much in terms of the science wehave now crossed the family tree
of primates more or less. Wehave talked about each of the
different groups and a littlebit of a weirdness on each of
them. Is there something thatyou guys saw in the game that
you'd like to talk about, thatwe haven't talked about?

Will (55:10):
I like that the cards focused in on the diverse array
of things that primates eat andwould give like, here's a food,
here's some of the primates thateat this food and focus in on
that because we, I think veryoften it's primates are often
very good generalists in thatthey're not, you know, they're

(55:30):
not known as picky eaters, butthey do have a wide range of
specialties. And you get thingslike gorillas, which are
herbivores, like, mostly, theyare specialized for, you know,
grazing effectively, like, notlike a cow does, but they are
eating bamboo and tough foliage,which is a very specialized

(55:55):
herbivore of a primate. So wejust, I like that they emphasize
the diet more to be like they'rethey're not all just eating the
typical stuff that you think ofa monkey eating or us eating.
They're eating a wide variety ofstuff.

Brian (56:09):
They're not eating bananas. I don't think bananas
in the game, actually. Yeah,they didn't.

David (56:13):
I think on the Kickstarter page they say there
are no bananas in this game.

Brian (56:19):
There were plenty of insects though,

David (56:22):
yes, and and I it was really cool because it meant
that you'd pick a food card, andthe food card would be like a
real plant with a scientificname and a portrait. And it
means that this game aboutprimates isn't just about
primates. No, there's also someplants in there, there's some
insects, and I think that thatis both fun because right you're

(56:47):
learning even more stuff. You'relearning things beyond primates,
but it also really drives home areally important part about
studying ecology and evolution,which is that you can't just
study primates, because primateslive alongside other species,
and they eat other species, andthey in order to fully

(57:09):
understand any group of animals,you also have to know about
other species, because that'stheir predators or their prey or
whatnot.

For me, I want to talk a bit about the bonus
cards, because we didn'tactually get to see that many
due to the nature of the game. Idon't think you see that many of
the bonus cards in any givengame. It's a thick stack of
cards, but this is where youhave a lot of the the other side
about primates. So I'm lookingon the Kickstarter here. It has
things like fission fusion,which is a certain thing that

(57:38):
groups of chimps, I think, willdo in terms of restructuring
their social networks and such,but it's also where you get a
lot of how we interact withprimates. You mentioned there's
like protective legislation,there's a wildlife veterinarian
card. There's other things therethat are showing how humans are
interacting with primates. Andsince they're all bonus cards.

(58:00):
They're probably the good wayswe are interacting with
primates. I doubt that there isa habitat destruction card or a
bushmeat card.

Brian (58:07):
Probably not on the probably not on the heart track.
No, I think that that would be aweird, weird way to get points
for

David (58:15):
well, and Brian mentioned the sort of passive learning.
And there are cards that arelike China, right? Primates that
live in China. And it's just alist of primates that live in
China. And I had a moment, Idon't remember, I might have
been the China it was one ofthose cards. I had a moment
sitting there, and I looked atone of those cards and I went,
Oh, I didn't know that specieslived in in that part of the

(58:36):
world. Oh, that's cool. Andthat's, you know, that was a
thing that I learned along theway,

I think the other thing to throw out is that this
is probably the best, the bestcited game that we have. Not the
others are citing it. But if youlook at the back of the rule
book, we talk about showing yourwork and showing your sources.
You said, every single card hasa citation link to it.?

Brian (58:59):
As near as I could tell. This game, this board game, has
an extensive references citedsection that is longer than many
review papers, every card, everydietary card, every behavior,
every everything seems to belinked to a an appropriate
citation. I actually, I'mcurious what citation format
they used. I didn't check thatthe Chicago style,

but it does mean that they did a lot of work to
make sure it's accurate. We talkabout hard science versus soft
science games. This isdefinitely a hard science game.
They wanted to be true to theactual science out there, to the
actual reality, while alsomaking a game that was fun to
play.

David (59:41):
I was reflecting on this while we were talking, you know,
going over the rules and such.The last time we were on your
podcast, we had played holotype.And holotype is really a game
where the mechanics of the gameare capturing the scientific
process. Yes, right. It'sgamified. But it is very much
you know you're doing the thingsthat actual scientists do.

Brian (01:00:05):
Holotype is about being a paleontologist.

David (01:00:08):
Yeah, this game is an interesting approach, because
the mechanics aren't trying tobe one to one with primate
ecology or evolution. Soinstead, the primate
evolutionary tree is the settingfor a game that is built to take

(01:00:32):
place in that setting we talkedduring playing that the tree
that is the game board is both aevolutionary tree of primates
and a physical, actual tree,right? Like you can climb
between the branches and stuff,and in terms of scientific

(01:00:52):
representation, that doesn'tmake any sense, right? That is
not an accurate way to depicteither of those things, but it
makes a game out of this realscientific depiction of primate
evolution. And I thought, Ithink they did a really
excellent job balancing. Youmade a game where all of the

(01:01:13):
pieces are scientific things,yeah, as opposed to a game where
you're like, true, the game isyou're traveling through primate
evolution. That's not reallywhat they've done here. They
just made a game out of thepieces of primate evolution.

Brian (01:01:26):
The goal of the game is to learn about primates. The
goal is to learn about primates.

Jason Wallace (01:01:31):
Yeah, it reminds me a lot about periodic which we
did a few episodes back whereIt's a game where your board is
the periodic table. The game isnot about the periodic table.
That's just the the tableau onwhich you are playing. Here we
have the primate evolutionarytree. Is the game board, even
though it's the game itself, theplaying of the game is not about

(01:01:52):
that. That is the setting inwhich you're doing everything.

David (01:01:54):
And I really like that. I thought that that was really
fun.

Will (01:02:00):
Another thing I really liked that they I liked that
they included extinct primatesin it, not only because Are they
part of primate evolution, butfrom a paleo perspective,
extinct primates get talkedabout very rarely. That's true
among

Brian (01:02:17):
outside of Homo outside of humans,

Will (01:02:18):
yeah, exactly outside of us and outside of, like, some
big names like Gigantopithecusand stuff like that, which

Brian (01:02:25):
is everybody's poster child for Bigfoot, right?

Will (01:02:27):
Yeah exactly. Yeah. Most of your fossil primates just
look like another primate tomost people, like, unless you
know what you're looking at.It's just a different kind of
monkey, a different kind of, youknow, lemur and you don't get
the wooly, you know, baboons andthe saber toothed gorillas,

(01:02:49):
like, you don't get theseoddball fossil primates that
stand out so much that they getattention from the general
public. So I like that they wereincluded, because I was even
having moments of like, Oh, hey,neat. I have never heard of this
guy because I'm not a primatespecialist, so I don't know any
names outside of the couple offamous ones, like gorilla lemurs
and stuff like that. So it wasfun getting to see some of that

(01:03:13):
and have a little moreappreciation for a fossil
assemblage that doesn't usuallyget much public attention.

Brian (01:03:23):
It is. It is really nice, yeah, because, I mean, what is
the point of a phylogenetictree? If you're not going to
talk about how you got from hereto there, it's not just extants,
right?

David (01:03:32):
well, and that's also how you build, you know, you were
talking about how the differentstops along the way on the tree
are representative ofevolutionary divergence points
and point times throughout theevolutionary history of the
group. The way we know thosetimes and those points is by
looking at fossils, yes,

and this is another case where there's way
more of those cards in the deckthan you will ever get through
in a single game, just based onhow much food you have to spend,
how you have to land exactly onthe right spot for them. It's
like, we maybe only went throughlike, what, five to eight
extinct primate cards the entiregame.

David (01:04:13):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I wanna, I wanna say we only ended
up purchasing like, three orfour between the four of us.

Brian (01:04:19):
They're expensive, and we weren't even doing it correctly,
right?

There's a decent number of them there, and
they're include like extincthomo species. I remember seeing
Australopithecus was on there.

David (01:04:30):
So also we mentioned it here and there, but I just want
to give one additional shout outto the ability cards, because
all of the ability cards are areal life adaptation of primates
turned into a fun game mechanic,right? It's leaping and it's
climbing through the trees andfood sharing and cheek pouches.

(01:04:51):
And I think that that's such afun again, it's gamifying real
world scientific information.And I think that that's really
cool.

Yeah. It's in a way that makes sense, because
sometimes we've seen cards inother games where, like, they
have the name and the abilitydoesn't really have any logical
connection to the thing it'srepresenting. But in this case,
they did a pretty good job ofmatching that. Oh, I can
understand how this mechanicrepresents leaping. So like,
leaping lets you, like, jumpover other spaces or something

(01:05:21):
like that. And this branchswinging lets you swing from one
side to another. And there'sother things about being able,
like, if you're a certain foodspecialist, then you can steal
the food, or take extra food orsomething,

Brian (01:05:32):
get some food. The social abilities that you'd see a lot
of those in the great apes wouldtranslate to that social track,
that heart track, right? It'slike, oh, it's a social bond. So
we're going to let you move upthat track in a different way.
It's like, it's the it's a greatway of finding your real thing.
What is a fun way ofrepresenting the metaphor in
what we're doing? And does itmake perfect scientific sense?

(01:05:53):
No, but it makes sort of a it'sgood for the vibes, right?

Will (01:05:58):
Well, it's also satisfying. Because, like, not
only does it convert to gameplaythat is like, Aha, now I get to
do a cool thing, but it feelslike that also emphasizes, yeah,
that's what this group's goodat.

Brian (01:06:12):
It's the role play. The role play is fun. You get to
pretend that you are one of theprimates, right?

Will (01:06:17):
you get to really appreciate the specializations
of, like, yeah, like, you, yougot to be a tarsier, or for a
moment, so you got to jump likecrazy. Because those things are
like, like, watching a tarsiermove around is like watching a
frog. It just goes, and it'sgone, and then it just lands
somewhere else and clings to theand it's just, they're so cool

(01:06:38):
at it. I like that. Theabilities were emphasizing the
cool stuff that the primates cando.

David (01:06:44):
And I, I think that this style of game you because this
is a game where there isn't agoal of the game, right? You can
collect points in a variety ofdifferent ways. There's
different abilities. Everyone'sgame is a little bit different.
Like everyone is collectingdifferent abilities, collecting
different cards, there'smultiple ways to accumulate

(01:07:07):
points, which I think is aperfect style of game for, a
game about evolution,

Brian (01:07:12):
about you got different solutions, different niches that
you can occupy

David (01:07:17):
exactly there's different there's different paths to
success. And I think that that'sa perfect if this had been a
game where there was one goaland everyone was striving for
this one specific thing to do, Ithink it would have been less
cohesive with the content.

Brian (01:07:34):
It wouldn't have felt like primates. Okay, well, let's
move on. Let's do our nitpickcorner. So I already talked
about mine, and my nitpick isthat they didn't give humans any
kind of special ability, eventhough there are some very
obvious options, like even justbipedalism, would have been a
clear biological thing that youcould put on humans. So that's

(01:07:55):
my nitpick. Did anybody elsehave anything else you don't
have to nitpick. Nitpicking isfun nitpicking. You know, we've
already mentioned, from myperspective, I take a lot from
gaming with science, from SilverScreen science. So this is your
little opportunity to have arant about something about the
game that maybe you thoughtcould have been different.

And got to say, like, if we talking a game about
primates, nitpicking is totallyon brand.

David (01:08:19):
Absolutely we are picking nits. The only thing that comes
to mind because I didn't thinkabout this ahead of time because
I forgot, but the first thingthat comes to mind is, I think
it would be cool if there wasmore variety of meeples
available. So there are fourmeeples, as we mentioned, each

(01:08:40):
one is a different type ofprimate on the tree. And this
came up the last time we were onthe show. I love the role play
aspect. Like I my meeple was thebush baby when we were playing,
and I happened to be because ofwhere we I was sitting relation
to the board. I was near thebush baby side of the tree, and
I couldn't really see very wellthe opposite side of the board,

(01:09:04):
so I said, All right, I'm justgoing to focus on this side,
because this is my tree, and I'mthe bush baby, and that's cool.
And I think if there were alsomeeples, because there's only
four different types of meeples,and there's six nodes on the
tree,

Brian (01:09:16):
yeah, there's six. bracnhes like, there's six tips
on the tree.

David (01:09:19):
So, and at the very least, it'd be cool to have one
for each of the branches. Butalso, if there was a gorilla
option, and if there was avariety, I think that would be
cool. I think that'd be fun.This is a light nitpick, because
I don't, it didn't actually takeaway from the game, but I think
that'd be a fun thing

Brian (01:09:35):
to have. This is a this is, honestly, this isn't a

David (01:09:38):
I wouldn't be surprised if there is that, or if it was
nitpick. This is a marketingidea. Selling expansion packs
with the new meeples and the newplayer boards.
like a stretch goal or somethingon the Kickstarter, because that
would be cool.

Will (01:09:53):
The only thing that comes to mind for me was that, and we
it, we would have to play againwith the actual rules. But if
you're are only going to pick upfood when you land on it, that
seems like it's going to be evenmore difficult to get extinct
cards. Yeah, and the fact thatyou have to land on the space

(01:10:15):
that the extinct primate is onto even get the chance to buy it
like and this is purely just,I'm a paleontologist, I want to
get the extinct cards. And itfeels like there's a lot of
barriers in the way to gettingthe extinct cards I want. I
that's so it's it's more justnow. But the cards I'm excited

(01:10:36):
to get are the ones that I haveto go through multiple hoops to
even get a chance to maybe getthem if I have the food that I
need when I'm able to land onthat space

and David doesn't beat you by a turn

Will (01:10:49):
Exactly. There's lots of hoops. David is one of the
hoops.

David (01:10:54):
This is how both games. So far, it seems that my
preferred way to play a gamelike this is to roleplay as a
character and troll Will,

Brian (01:11:04):
hey, I'm feeling very seen right now, you know, but it
obviously didn't hurt you. Ithink you did really well,
David,

David (01:11:14):
but actually it was a winning strategy this time.
Yeah, for sure.

Brian (01:11:17):
Trolling Will is always willing. Was always a winning
strategy.

Will (01:11:21):
You win if you win and you win if you don't.

Brian (01:11:24):
Why are you buying the extinct primates with? Why are
we collecting food to buyextinct primates? The extinct
primates don't need any food.They're already dead.

David (01:11:34):
Yeah? Need to. You need to use food to pay your
excavators.

Brian (01:11:39):
Oh, okay with all that insect protein,

David (01:11:42):
yes, that's exactly there's no money in the game
honeydew.

Brian (01:11:47):
What about you, Jason? You got anything to pick out?

My only nitpick is also that humans aren't
special. It's like, Oh, come on.So

Will (01:11:59):
Well, it's definitely got a little bit of this is one of
my common complaints that comesup with like, people recognize
the superpowers that cats haveall the time, that you know,
they can see in the dark, andthey're agile, and they have
claws, and then dogs are justdogs so much of the time that
people don't recognize that.It's like they have one of the
most powerful sense of smells onour planet. They also have night

(01:12:20):
vision, and they are incredibly,incredible stamina runners. So,
like, I think humans are gettinga little bit of treatment. It's
like, well, it's a human whatcan they do? So many things

Brian (01:12:32):
I'm winggling the fingers on my hands in front of the
camera right now. Like, here,that's a thing. That's a very
important thing.

Will (01:12:37):
We created a piano, which is all about us. It's just going
to the 10 the 11 on howdexterous we are, just showing
off. Yeah, like we areincredibly cool animals. It's
just very easy to get bored withit because we're around us all
the time. Yeah, and I feels likeone of those cases,

Brian (01:12:59):
I guess Gibbons got the that crazy brachiation ability.
It's like, we're doing that withour fingers, right? Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Like, okay. Well, let'smove on to grades. We are going
to combine fun grade and sciencegrade, so you can just do them
back to back. I think I'vealready made it really obvious
that I think this is a pure A onscience for me and for fun, I

(01:13:22):
I'm just gonna knock it downjust a little bit as an A-,
because I don't, maybe that'snot even fair. No, I'm gonna
stick with the A-. I just wantto play this game more, which
maybe that means I shouldactually be giving it an A I
don't know. Because if, for me,if my grading is, how often do I
want to pull it out and play itlike I actually from this
conversation alone, I want toplay this a couple more times.

(01:13:43):
Jason, can we play this a couplemore times?

Yes, we can.

Brian (01:13:46):
Okay, thank you.
All right. What about you?Jason? What do you think?

So I will also give it an A for science. I mean
that citation list alone isshould merit an A, but also just
the quality of the depictionsand being accurate in the little
things that don't have to beaccurate, like the letters and
numbers for the points, thespaces on the board which they

(01:14:11):
don't like come out right andtell you this, they're just
there. But you can dig, and youcan find the information if you
want it. I think definitely afor science. I would put it at a
B to a B+ for play. I also wantto play it again, but I want to
play it again to see all thecomponents I didn't get to see
the first time. I actually feltthat the depth of strategy was
shallower than I like that thedecision points were relatively

(01:14:37):
simple, and so I prefer morestrategic depth in my games than
I felt I got out of this. Ithink it's a beautiful game. I
think it was fun to play. I justthink I would probably get bored
of it after a few go arounds.

Brian (01:14:51):
Was it a little bit too random for you? Basically, no,
not, but

not that. Actually, it's just that the
decision points, I think, arerelatively. Because you have
this one board that's actuallyfairly small, and there's only,
there's literally only six pathsyou can go up. It's there's not
that many things I have tobalance to figure out what is
the optimal play this time, itrarely felt like I had to make a
decision between here are threedifferent things I want, and I

(01:15:16):
can only pick one of them. Itwas usually like, oh, that's the
best choice. That's the bestchoice. That's the best choice.

Brian (01:15:22):
Now I'm curious, because, like I said, the tarsiers only
have one ability. So if youdefinitely want a leaping
ability card, all you need to dois go up that tarsier route. You
have one for sure. I don't knowthat's a winning strategy, but
it is a reliable one.

Will (01:15:38):
I think my, my grade I think would be close to Jason's
of A, A+ for science. I'm soblown away by how well they did
and the attention. And it's alove letter to primatology, like
it's, it's just there's so manycool details and neat examples
that they put in there, and thenfun wise, it's, yeah, I think

(01:16:04):
somewhere in the Bs, I had fun.I enjoyed it, but I did not feel
like, oh, what's the word I'mlooking for? Like, like, pumped
for my turn. Like it was, it wasvery much like, I'll just roll
and I guess I'll see whathappens. Yeah, cuz, like, I if I

(01:16:26):
move with all of them, then thatvery much decides what I can do.
There's not a lot, there's not,like, a huge number of paths,
and so much can happen betweenmy turns that there's no point
in, like, planning what I'mgonna do, because The food I was
gonna get got grabbed, theextinct one I was gonna get got

(01:16:47):
grabbed. So I'm just gonna rollin, and then I will just apply
numbers, and then turns over so,like, it there was, I wasn't
invested in my turn of, like,Oh, let's see. I've been, I've
been planning this, or I'vebeen, you know, getting ready
the same way that, like, like,holotype, where I felt like I

(01:17:08):
was, like, all right, I'm aimingfor something. I've got a goal
in mind, and I'm working towardthat over multiple turns. This
one was just where the dice rollis and land is what happens.

Yeah, the fact that there's no private hand
probably makes, probablycontributes to that, just
because you can't have, like,Oh, this is my thing I'm working
towards. And no one else cantake this from me. Like,
everything's out on the board.It's like, if you don't grab it

(01:17:40):
this turn, someone can grab itbefore your next turn. What
about you David?

David (01:17:41):
I am gonna, I'm at this point, saying the same things
that everybody else has said, Ithink A for science Absolutely,
extremely well

Brian (01:17:44):
consensus,

David (01:17:45):
put together and then play, yeah, I'd say a B, maybe a
B+. I think it was fun. I thinkthat it's an enjoyable game to
play the same way that, like abeautiful looking video game is
fun to play because I get tolook at it and it's great. I
think that there, I agree withsome of what Jason was saying,

(01:18:08):
that it feels like my decisionmaking opportunities are a bit
limited in this game, that thereare things that it would be fun
to do, like the extinct primateswould be fun to go for, but
there's not really much of a wayto plan for that. Also, like
Jason said, I wish there wereways to see more options in the

(01:18:29):
game with the primates, theextinct primates, with the bonus
cards, you for the most part,there's a handful of them
available. There's not a lot ofways to dig through them. You
don't get them very often. Sothe game feels and then there's
all very limited. There's only10 rounds, yeah, yeah. And I
found myself, as the game wasgetting close, I was kind of

(01:18:52):
bummed that we were almost done,because I wanted to be able to
explore more and do more andbuild up more resources and
stuff.

Brian (01:19:01):
That you'd have to play this game many times to really
get to see everything the gamehas to offer. Yeah, I feel

Will (01:19:07):
like I'd want to play it for way more than 10 rounds. But
if I played it again, I'd justjust break the round cap and do
it multiple times.

Brian (01:19:17):
Just keep, take the rounds out. Just keep shuffling
the diet cards.

Will (01:19:20):
Just keep, yeah, and then just when we we've hit hit a
time, we feel like we're done.

David (01:19:26):
All that said, I think that it is a really nice game. I
think that I sometimes I findmyself I get overwhelmed with a
board game, if there's too manyoptions to be made, or if it's
too strategy based or toocompetitive, then it can start
to feel a little bit lessaccessible or a little bit more

(01:19:47):
stressful. So I do like a gamewhere there this is an easy game
to play casually, true, right? Idon't. I'm not. I don't feel
like I'm having to put in awhole lot of thought to it. I
don't feel like. I'm having toworry about getting scooped or
somebody you know, running awaywith it. It does feel a bit more

(01:20:09):
friendly and accessible in thatway.

Will (01:20:11):
Yeah, well, because you can't really play like a wrong
strategy if you are moving yourprimates up the tree, you will
eventually get to the end of thetree and get a primate right,
even if you're just moving themand rolling dice and like, you
will get primates. You're notYou're not going to be just
shooting yourself in the foot,because it's like, well, you you

(01:20:33):
didn't do this, so you justdon't get that thing that you
were aiming for. You will getprimates. You will get cards. So
even just playing it as asun-strategically as possible, by
the end of the game, you'regonna have four or five primate
cards that you will be yourlittle collection. And that's
still fun.

David (01:20:53):
I would be interested to play this game with kids. Sure.
I think that because, like Jasonsaid, it's not there's there's,
there's a bunch of differentparts to this game, but the
actual gameplay is prettystraightforward and simple to
understand. There's not a lot ofdetailed strategy, but it is.
There's a lot of fun in it.There's a lot of really cool

(01:21:15):
pictures, and there's a lot ofreally evocative abilities, and
you have your meeples, which arebig and very visually exciting.
I think that it feels like it'sa fun family game.

Yeah, I could see, I almost feel like middle
school would be a good area forthis, because it's they'd have
enough strategic complexity, andthey'd be able to really get it.
Whereas, if you play this withlike, an eight year old, like,
okay, there's just a bunch ofmonkeys and such, but an eight
year old, like an eighth gradeor something, then it's like
gateway primatology. And so

Brian (01:21:48):
primatology, not even once. All right, um, you know
what? We may not have time to dothis, but I did want to ask, and
I'm sorry, I know we're alreadyrunning long. Do you guys have a
favorite game or just a gamethat you really like? Because
we've been asking people that Iknow we're already over, do you
have a board game or it doesn'thave to be a board game, and it

(01:22:10):
doesn't have to be a favorite,but what's a game that you like?

Will (01:22:15):
I don't have a sciencey one that comes right doesn't
have to be

Brian (01:22:18):
a science game. We literally had, like Monopoly or
something like

Will (01:22:22):
the one that I've played, like, like board game I've
played recently that I haven'tgotten to play it as much as I
want to, but I've gotten to playthe number of times with a
number of people, and I reallylike it is a the alien board
game, the escape the Nostromo,something the Nostromo, which is
the first movie, Alien movie asa board game. Each person takes

(01:22:44):
control of one of the crewmembers who has their own
ability, and then the alien isan auto unit that moves toward
the nearest player.

Brian (01:22:53):
It's a true monster. It's just responding to stimuli

Will (01:22:56):
exactly so you are just trying to get tasks done. And
it's great because it's verythis. You're fighting the
ticking clock because, like, oneof the end things is the self
destruct sequence getsactivated. So you now have this
many rounds before everythinggoes off. And it's got this very

(01:23:17):
fun. We all are working likeit's your turn next you should
go do this, because then I cando this. And if you get if you
get this to them, they can getit to me, and I can build the
thing. And it's, we're planningfive turns ahead, because we've
got seven turns left. And itfeels like the movie. It feels
like it captures the moviereally well. And I love it.

Brian (01:23:39):
It sounds really fun. Actually,

David (01:23:41):
it's called fate

Will (01:23:42):
Fate of the Nostromo. There we go.

Yeah, I've played nemesis, which is basically
alien with the serial numbersfiled off. And it's also fun. It
sounds like it plays similarly.Actually.

Brian (01:23:55):
I might need to go to the board game cafe and see if they
have that. That sounds like alot of fun.

Will (01:23:59):
It's great.

How about you? David,

David (01:24:03):
um, I the first thing that comes to mind is a game
that I played once, many yearsago, that I've been thinking
about ever since, which wascalled Pitchstorm, which is a
game where the whole premise isit has sort of the that apples
to apples thing where one personis the judge and the all the

(01:24:23):
other players are,

Brian (01:24:25):
oh, it's like a party game.

David (01:24:26):
It's a party game, absolutely. But the premise is
that you're pitching movie ideasto, you know, a studio or
whoever, and you just have to,like, improvise studio ideas,
and then, or improvise movieideas. And as you're pitching
it, they can throw out cards tolike, modify your prompt, and

(01:24:48):
you have to adjust it on the fly

Brian (01:24:50):
so you get like, studio notes,

David (01:24:52):
basically, yeah, it was so much fun. It was just like a
fun, goofy improv party game.And I played it one time. Time
at a friend's wedding, and thatwas the only time I played it,
and I had a great time. I thinkI did really well at it, which
helps, that helped me to enjoyit, and that, yeah, that game
was, it was super fun, and I'vebeen thinking about it for the

(01:25:14):
last or 10 years, or howeverlong that's been okay.

Brian (01:25:18):
So now all those common descent listeners that have come
to the podcast, you know what tosend to their PO Box, right?

Theyre gonna get 47 copies of pitchstorm,

David (01:25:29):
and then I'll sell them.

Brian (01:25:33):
It's all a con, guys,

David (01:25:35):
exactly. This is just a pyramid scheme.

Brian (01:25:40):
All right. Well, now that we've revealed that we should
probably go ahead and wrap upthe podcast. Thanks guys, thank
you for coming on.

David (01:25:49):
Oh, come find us. We are hosts of a podcast called common
descent, which is a podcastabout paleontology, evolution
and the history of life onearth. Every episode, we tackle
the main topic suggested by ouraudience, and we also talk about
science news. And occasionallywe do little side discussions
where we talk about science andmovies, and we speculatively

(01:26:11):
evolve monsters during October,we actually, if this is coming
out around Darwin Day, we willbe timing perfect. Actually, the
timing is pretty great becausewe will be in the midst of
releasing a special series inFebruary where we'll be
speculatively evolving Pokemon.

Brian (01:26:30):
This is pok-E. The series. Is it going to be four
Pokemon?

David (01:26:34):
We will be doing five episodes where we will be
specifically evolved intospeculatively evolving legendary
Pokemon.

Brian (01:26:42):
Oh, fantastic. Okay, all right. Well, everybody look
forward to that. Go listen toCommon Descent. Go listen to
Pok-E. I'm gonna wrap it upthere. Listeners, I hope you
have a great month and greatgames.

And as always, have fun playing dice with the
universe. See ya.

Brian (01:26:57):
This has been the gaming of a Science Podcast copyright
2026 listeners are free to reusethis recording for a non
commercial purpose, as long ascredit is given to gaming of
science. This podcast isproduced with support from the
University of Georgia. Allopinions are those of the hosts,
and do not imply endorsement bythe sponsors. If you wish to
purchase any of the games thatwe talked about, we encourage

(01:27:18):
you to do so through yourfriendly local game store. Thank
you and have fun playing dicewith the universe.

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S3E01 - Primates (Primate Evolution)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S3E01 - Primates (Primate Evolution)