About Studying mammals: Life in the trees

David Attenborough looks at 'life in the trees: examining how species have evolved to cope with arboreal living. You will learn how lemurs, anteaters, bears and many others have developed different methods to help movement and survival. By the end of this unit you should be able to: identify the common features shown by tree-dwelling mammals from different groups; show an awareness of the difficulties of classifying primates, especially in relation to the position of the prosimians; give an account of opportunities and challenges encountered by tree-dwelling mammals and of evolved adaptations linked with arboreal life; provide examples of the closeness (and sometimes interdependence) of the relationship between tree dwellers and their habitat; be aware of differences in lifestyle and forms of locomotion amongst a wide range of prosimians; give examples of adaptive radiation amongst the Madagascan lemurs; describe differences in lifestyle (e.g. feeding habits) amongst lemurs, including features linked with their arboreal life.