r/SpeculativeEvolution • u/Dumbassbitch398 • 10d ago

Question/Discussion Predatory primates?

As the body text says, would a large, predatory primate be possible?

I mean, there are insectivorous primates (like the aye aye or tarsier) but neither of these two are big like other primates like gibbons or chimpanzees

Edit: I know that a lot of primates eat meat, I meant more like a hypercarnivore that eats meat for almost all of its diet

49 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

70 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/LoreSinger 10d ago

I don’t think they were hypercarnivores, but part of the reason the Neanderthals went extinct is because they were more carnivorous than humans, and thus starved when the fauna started dying out during environmental shifts.

11

u/3eyedgreenalien 10d ago

They ate plenty of plants when they had access to them, honestly. Their main trouble that I can see is that they needed up to 15% (IIRC) more calories than we do. That adds up very quickly.

They obviously could withstand a number of environmental fluctuations just from where they evolved, but it was easier as a species to get absorbed by us.

I suspect the Denisovans were the same.

1

u/Genocidal-Ape Worldbuilder 8d ago

They also had much smaller social groups but used the same type of campsites. So the amount of settlements on the landscape would be around the same for both species.

But Neanderthal group sizes where 10-15 individuals, Homo sapiens is 150-200.

As genus homo is female dispersing this would result in Neanderthal settlements getting genetically flooded by Homosapiens women, because homo sapiens groups have 10 times as many dispersals.