Millions of years ago, our most distant ancestors swapped swinging in trees for walking on the ground and according to scientists, that same process is beginning again.
Monkey and lemur species which have always been known to live in trees are now beginning to spend a lot more time roaming the forest floor in response to devastating levels of deforestation and climate change.
A new study which was based on more than 150,000 hours of observation, looked at 47 tree-dwelling primate species living across almost 70 sites in Madagascar and the Americas.
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This research has shown the big change in habitat is a global trend and not centralised to one area affected by deforestation and climate change.
Giuseppe Donati, of Oxford Brookes University, says the tree-dwellers are being forced to the ground to seek shade and water as temperatures in the forest continue to rise.
Speaking to New Scientist about the latest discovery, he said: “In most tropical countries where these species live, humans log the forest.
“This creates gaps and it opens the canopy of the forest. That causes an increase in temperature."
He went on to say that deforestation “is working together with climate change” to force these animals into finding new habitats and learning how to survive in them.
One example he spoke about was the bamboo lemur from Madagascar, which lives almost all of its life in trees.
But in the south of Madagascar where the forest canopy is increasingly being thinned-out, he says bamboo lemurs have taken to grazing on the grasslands - “a bit like little cows”.
At this point, it is not known for certain what forced our most distant ancestors out of the trees and into wandering the African savannah, however, the change in habitat is widely believed to have been as a resul of climate change.
These current changes are taking place far more rapidly than the natural fluctuations in the Earth’s climate that have been recorded in the past, and our monkey cousins will struggle to adapt in the same way we did.
Timothy Eppley, from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, says: “None of the species we studied are likely to fully transition to a terrestrial lifestyle.
“It’s simply not a viable long-term outcome to happen in such a short period of time.”
He says if tree-dwelling monkeys like lemurs are to be saved from the new mass extinction currently decimating the planet's biodiversity, “we need to actively protect the forest habitat that we currently have”.
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